Hey everyone,
I’m a third-year, chemical engineering student. I plan to graduate in four years (i.e. May 2016), and for some reason I just cannot find an engineering internship. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve applied to ~80-85 places since this past December, but still no luck. I’ve had a couple phone interviews as well as one individual interview, but that’s it.
What confuses me the most is that I think that I actually stand out (at least somewhat). I have ~3.8 GPA from a reputable big ten university, and I also have several research experiences. Sure, I don’t have any past internship experiences, but it is really distressing when I see other whom I would consider much less qualified to land an internship. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for them, I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
The only thing I can really think of is that maybe my research experiences are actually harming me because they indirectly tell companies that I am looking into graduate school after my B.S. (which is true, but then employers know that I probably won’t work there for the rest of my life since research is my passion). However, I’m not quite competitive enough to land an REU (where acceptance rates are typically no greater than 5%), so I just don’t know what to do.
My BIL is a chemical engineer and he had a very hard time locating a position after he received his BS. So he finally got a PH.D, but it didn’t help with the jobs. He moved all over the country following the positions and finally settled in the Northeast. Although he works for a medium-sized company, he can only employ one intern every couple of years.
It’s a very good paying field but the jobs don’t seem to plentiful. You’re going to have to really network and ask your university professors.
As a ChemE who just finished my job search, I can tell you the market for ChemE’s is definitely not what it was a few years back when we entered college. I think the popularity of the field helped to saturate the market, plus tons of companies are downsizing right now. Lot of experience out there and fewer openings. I would focus on Oil&Gas – lots of aging engineers and companies looking for new talent. They do a ton of full-time hiring from their intern pools.
By far the best way to get an internship is to go through friends, family, and your school’s alum network. Applying blindly to online postings, while it can work out, is a much more random path to go down. It feels like nearly everyone I know who had industrial internships came directly from alums at career fairs or through family friends.
I assume you have been sending out resumes. Almost without exception, this is a waste of time, particularly if it is in response to an ad. It shouts that you have no experience, in particular because you don’t understand how little time people have in the workplace. You should assume that the first place a resume goes is in the wastebasket.
What you have to do is figure out is who to contact and what they need, then get to them at the right time - maybe even before they know it. This is as difficult as it sounds, but look at it as a test of your abilities. It means you need to pick up the phone and network, trick the gatekeepers to get by them, etc. Then talk your way in.