Congrats on Engineering Your Way through College: Now Try Finding A Job!

The engineering curriculum at many colleges is among the most tedious and time consuming of all majors.  While students in other majors can spend a portion of junior year and most of senior year “enjoying” their college lives, engineers are often up late at night in the labs and libraries working on design projects and research papers.  Isn’t it a great feeling to finally get that engineering degree on graduation day?  The question then becomes, where do I go now?
Guest blogger William Merunka touched on some similar points in his inspirational article last week, however I have had so many inquiries from graduates about their current situations that I felt this topic warranted another post.
The bottom line is that the economy is still in rough shape and most engineering companies are still not hiring, but that doesn’t mean you should give up at all.  There is a great quote by an unknown person that goes, “When you want your goal badly enough, feel the intensity of it, let it fuel your waking thoughts and actions, let it influence you in all ways possible and let nothing get in the way of achieving it.”  I keep that quote taped to my monitor and refer to it regularly for inspiration and motivation, and it works very well.
I understand that being a graduate and having “nowhere to turn” with respect to a career in your field can be extremely frustrating, but it also might provide an opportunity for other things.  There have been several discussions on LinkedIn and other sites about what to do while unemployed.  Here are a few that I would like to offer.  Please note some of these may or not be financially affordable at the time, but I am throwing out everything I have:

• Use some of this time to travel to places you have always wanted to go or visit family or friends,
• Spend some extra time with your children because you never know when a job may come along and how demanding it will be,
• Spend some time in the local libraries reading career advancement and personal development books to get ahead, or read books that you have always wanted to read purely for enjoyment,
• Look for career advancement courses at your local library (these are usually FREE),
• Stay up to date on your industry through websites, blogs, magazines, etc.,
• Attend networking events wherever and whenever you can.  There are usually fairly low cost events through the local chamber of commerce.
• Improve upon your public speaking and presenting skills through taking a course, joining a Toastmasters chapter or reading books on those topics.  These skills are so critical to career advancement and will help during the interviewing process.
• Spend time thinking of skills that set you apart from others, that you can discuss in your interviews.
• If you do take a temporary job outside of your industry (absolutely nothing wrong with doing this), look to improve skills on the job that will apply to a job in your industry, i.e. people skills.
• Improve your writing skills in any way possible as writing is so important in our world yet so underrated.  Some of the e-mails I have seen go out…..ughhhh!

Whatever you do, don’t give up and don’t compromise your true passions.  The job you want is out there and you are on the path to finding it.  The path isn’t always flat and straight, but no matter what path you have stumbled upon, there is opportunity in it somewhere, you just have to find it.
All of that hard work in college will pay off.
Happy Trails!