What month should new engineering grads look for work?

College Majors Engineering Majors
21

What field is he interested? Pick the biggest names in that field and search their website’s careers section. There are often tabs for entry level, or you can search for the word entry. The big companies recruit all year for upcoming new grads. DS, graduating in May, started searching in September. He has already interviewed with several giant aerospace/defense companies and has more scheduled next week.

Also search on engineerjobs dot com. At the top, select Engineers and Entry Level Jobs. You can search by discipline and state if you wish. It basically pulls listings from Indeed, but if you find one you like, you should go directly to that employer’s website.

22

Yes, that website is good. One of the few that you can look at intern ads and entry level ads.

My son is interested in product design and solar. He does not plan to work in one of those design HVAC type jobs or a defense dept job. But he is also open to other things as he is more of a generalist and is open to other opportunities.

23

I would suggest not applying to intern ads. I don’t think he will have a lot of success with them. I don’t know if that was your intent in mentioning intern ads.

24

Most intern ads want an undergrad or grad student and are pretty definite, those are not going to hire him, but a few mention that they are considered entry level jobs so are more vague or they do mention a new grad can apply.

It is the consensus of this forum that new grads should not apply for intern ads but if you read some of those intern ads, they want an awful lot of experience that a Jr is not likely to have.

So, it is his plan to look for entry level jobs but if an intern ad looks good, he will apply and the worst case they don’t consider him.

Since he was unable to do a Jr. Summer internship, he doesn’t mind if they pay him less for a summer opportunity or even if it ends right after the summer. He still would get the experience to put on his resume.

25

I see. I would still lean towards using his career center. They are usually a wealth of information. Also, he can try searching on his university on LinkedIn. If he has a target company, look it up on LinkedIn, and then search on his school. He might find an alumnus he can connect with. Or the career center might collect information about which grads are where. Good luck to him!

26

Thanks VMT, When he goes back to school from the break I will encourage him to do so . The career services dept did a great job helping with his resume. They do not however, have a lot of focus on engineering that I can see. The links in that section of their website are old, some are dead, and the last blog post was 3 months ago.

The person who helped with his resume did linkedin connect with him so he could see her connections since she has over 500, but none were engineers. She did however, show him how to search for alumni he could reach out to just using the advanced search section.

27

Having worked in an engineering career center before, I can say that they are pretty much all business majors assigned to engineering. They may or may not know how engineering recruitment works and mostly just repeat what they were taught in business school. Contrary to what they say, “Hi I’m XXX and I was interested in your company’s (summer internships/co-ops/full-time positions)” is quite effective.

Job boards work, though the hit rate is very small. Expect to apply to many positions and have to have a pretty well-written resume to have any luck there.

If he’s graduating, he should be looking for jobs not internships. It’s harder to find work without a junior year internship but far from impossible - it will take more effort and possibly more time. The last thing you should need to worry about when graduating is if a three-month “trial run” will lead to a job offer.

28

I hear you @NeoDymium . I will suggest he see try and focus more on ads that sound like entry level. I agree with you about the career center. Maybe at a bigger school with a bigger engineering dept or a STEM school they have a dedicated person for engineering students. I would say the ME dept secretary is the one emailing ME students directly about engineering opportunities she gets, not career services.

29

@Lakemom, there are a few internships that are specifically aimed at new grads. I would consider those as a way to boost the experience on the resume and more importantly, they are often just very extended interviews ending in a job offer if they like the candidate. This is IF he can’t land a regular job. I’d also recommend use LinkedIn to look for jobs. They have a good job search function. Good luck.

30

I agee @eyemgh . One just has to read the entire intern ad to determine how amenable they are to new grads but there are some, I’ve seen so far.

Linkedin is great! Using Advanced search, you can find out if anyone went to your college or we are even looking whether they went to my husband’s college (he’s not an engineer though) to find insider folks my son can reach out to.

31

And if he does get an email from his ME department secretary , he could pursue it if it seems at all interesting. One of my sons got a lead for an internship from his department advisor initially through an email. It lead to a great internship, which in turn led to a full time offer . So, his department may be able to help as well. You never know.

32

I suspect that a new grad needs to look in the Fall of his senior year. The reason for that is I know quite a few undergrads look for summer internships during December, interview during spring break and start working immediately after the finals. New grads have to be more proactive than that to compete with these cheap labors.

That’s what my son (ME in NYC) and his best friends (Comp Science at CalTech and RPI) did during their freshman year. All of them had a lot of interning experience and skills accumulated during high school. So during December of their first year in college, they started look for a paid summer internships. By February, they were actively interviewing in person or via Skype. By March, each person had 3 offers to choose from in different states. They spent April to decide, finalize the deal, sign the paper, then arrange housing and travel. As soon as the school ended in mid May, they started working for the next three months.

Now in their sophomore year, they repeat the process. However, year 2 is much easier. By December (last month), they already lined up the next internship without massive interviewing. One is to work at a robotics company in NYC, one will be with Google, and another one resume with his MIT Lincoln Lab job. My son’s company wanted him to start in the NYC office over the 4 weeks Christmas break, work on assignments during the school year, then fly him to the California office for the summer. All these students got their 2nd summer internships through personal recommendations from their previous bosses. None of them sent out a resume first, which made me wonder how effective it is to do mass resume mailing with no connections. My son had applied to his company 3 years in a row with no response. Once his old boss sent a recommendation email, all doors opened up.

Interestingly, my son said his school’s career fair was not very helpful. Companies all wanted to hire CS major, not much opportunities for the engineering students. Luckily in NYC, he could build up his own network by working as an independent engineering designer for the small start up companies.

I always wonder how companies can expect a new college grad to have 1 to 2 years of experience for their entry level jobs. Now I know…if these kids’ luck continue, by the time they graduate, they will have enough cumulative working experiences to meet the job requirement. So these days, to look for a permanent job need to pave the way in their freshman year.

My son has another friend who is a in IT major, graduated last year with no internship or working experience during college. He did a 6-months internship to learn more skills while looking for a job. He followed his boss to all the meet ups and meetings, like a fly on the wall. After 6 months, he landed a job with Lucient.

33

Your son and his friends must be pretty driven. On this board and elsewhere, it is felt that most engineering companies are not interested in HS and freshman for internships and some students at that time haven’t even settled into exactly what of type of engineering they want to do. Sophomores are more desired but it is really Juniors that companies want because they know more. Sounds like your son will not have any trouble finding work.

Agreed, getting a contact in a company through someone else you know can be the ticket to getting job at a popular company.

34

Yes, usually internship opportunities are mostly for college upperclassmen. (I still encourage students to start going to the campus job fairs freshmen year and applying for jobs and REU/research. It’s great practice). There are exceptions.

Usually the career center is a student’s best resource. But it sounds like at your son’s school the ME secretary is key too. He should drop by and see if there are employer lists or other helpful information that is not online. Our kids get spoiled by email and remote access, but sometimes it’s good to stop by in person too.

35

I agree Colorado mom. Good point.

36

Does anyone know how companies would view a student in their freshman year but who has enough credits to technically be a sophomore with regards to summer internships?

37

@albert69 it could depend on whether or not you have enough engineering coursework. Sure you could have enough credits to have sophomore standing, but the majority of credits people typically come in with tend to be just the basic math and physics or general electives.

I’m not saying it is impossible to get an internship after freshman year, but it will be quite difficult. If you have an engineering career fair at your school, it is not a bad idea to go. If anything, you will get practice talking to recruiters. When you are inexperienced in doing this, you will definitely make mistakes. Learning how to make a good impression to recruiters will take practice. It’s better to make these mistakes freshman year and learn from them in time for sophomore year.

38

@albert69 go look for an internship. You won’t know if you don’t try. I know plenty of engineers who landed internships after freshmen year. You may not do a lot of meaningful work (like after you junior year) since you don’t have lots of knowledge but the benefits are 1. usually paid and a much better pay than flipping burgers 2. great learning experience 3. resume booster and helps you land that next internship 4. great networking

some top employers like Northrup even have programs for high school students. However, i think the best way since you are still a freshmen is to network with your family and friends and friends of friends to see if you can get in some place. Don’t accept the fact that it is too hard to get anything or impossible.

what engineering speciality are you studying?

39

He certainly should check with career services to see if any companies are scheduled to come to campus to interview for engineering jobs, and find out how to get on those interview schedules if possible,

40

Visit the campus outplacement office. It will have a schedule of when employers are visiting campus to recruit.