I've never really looked for work, jobs have just sort of presented themselves. Ya'll got any ideas for finding mechanical engineering jobs?
I'd like to be on a floor somewhere, but also see the appeal of a 40 hour week in an office.
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Some background information:
By the late 1980's the average career length in engineering was approaching 10 years. The Federal government sends out a survey every 10 years to find out what the numbers are. Back then there were 2 million engineers in the US. Each year there were 80 thousand new US engineering graduates plus another 60 thousand(?) H1B's entering the job market. Of the total 140,000 graduates about 100,000 actually went into engineering. Those 100,000 graduates pushed out 100,000 engineers that were then employed.
Since that time things have gotten much worse. The number of engineers in the US is less than 2 million and the market is flooded with H1Bs. The government surveys still show 2 million engineers but that number now includes programmers, field service, support staff and other professions that have little if any training in engineering. The number of engineers in the US is NOT a function of the total population. It is determined by the number of independent companies that do engineering work. Keep in mind that there is no longer a McDonald Douglas, a Digital Equipment, a Compact Computer, a Bell Labs, A Martin Marietta, and so on. They were either merged or bought out and closed and as a consequence the engineering jobs disappeared as well.
Most, perhaps 80 percent, of the jobs in engineering do not require formal training in engineering. The skills needed for the jobs are learned while employed. The formal training that you received at the university will have little to no relevance to what your employer needs.
You do not need to worry about your GPA if you are interviewing with a engineering manager. The HR people are different. They do not have the knowledge or skills to identify the good from the bad. They can only check for credentials. The will ask for a GPA and any other certification that they can think of that will relieve themselves of taking any responsibility for a hiring mistake.
The least stable jobs in engineering involve analytical work. That includes stress analysis, heat transfer, thermodynamics, structural dynamics, fluid mechanics, control systems and to a lesser extent machine design,
There is a reason for this. When a new product is being developed the engineering staffing is primarily older, experienced, and capable of doing extensive analytical work. Once the product has been developed, tested, and successfully sold those expensive engineers are no longer needed. What is needed is a support staff to do field service, bills of materials, marketing, custom modifications, and incremental improvements. The staff that was composed primarily of skilled engineers is replaced with a staff that may be 90% unskilled but with degrees and 10% original staff kept around in case anything goes wrong.
A second consideration is that engineers who do analytical work are considered commodities by HR. It is easy to define what a stress analyst does and run a add in the newspaper when one is needed. A engineer who is capable of doing a number of jobs simultaneously is much more difficult to replace.
Mechanical design is a more stable occupation. . That is because it is now viewed as a software technician job rather than a branch of engineering. Years ago a design engineer did conceptual work, quick calculations and provided some preliminary sketches so that the marketing group would have something to show to potential customers. The formal drafting and computer aided design came much latter after a order was received. This work was driven by the need to optimize the design and to prepare for manufacturing. Today, a design engineer is someone with credentials using Solid Works, Catia, or some other software package. These are skilled jobs. However they are not the engineering jobs that were hinted at while you were attending school. The good news is that these skills are always in demand. They are essential for the support of a existing product.
The same cannot be said for those engineers who specialize in analytical work
New graduates who are not immediately employed in engineering become obsolete about 8 months after graduation and are largely abandoned in favor of the next years crop. You need to act quickly. Choose your first engineering job carefully. If you stay more that 18 months at your first job the job market will assume that is all you are capable of doing. If it is a good job then there is no problem. If not, then you are at a significant disadvantage. The HR people will view you as damaged goods. The remedy is to go back to school for another degree and a receive a new set of credentials. If you have social contacts with someone at a company you are interested in, it is possible to bypass the HR people and get direct access to engineering management. This is much faster and much less expensive than going back to school.
If you intend to make engineering a life long career you have three choices. You can go into management. You can start out in field service. You can start out in sales.
Getting on the management ladder is difficult. You need to be rapidly advancing by the time you are 25. If you are still working in the dimly lit cubicles by your late 20's that avenue for success is blocked. Advancement into management is only possible in companies that are rapidly expanding and are developing new products. These will be small companies. They will not be Lockheed, Lyondelbasell, or Exxon.
Field service and sales allows you to meet the customer. Every time you meet a customer you are having a job interview. Every time you meet a customer you are finding out what the market needs rather than what your manager wants. If you decide to change employers moving is easy. You have a long list of managers who know your capabilities and work ethic. If you decide to start your own company having knowledge of what the customer needs will help you succeed. Your formal engineering skills are useless when starting a company if you do not know what the customer wants. If you do a little research you will find that most successful new companies got their start because the existing companies were relying on old designs and technology and refused to meet their customer's needs.