Important Things to Consider When Looking for that First Engineering Job

This time of the year can be one of the most stressful times of an engineering student’s undergraduate college career.  Some of the things that you might be encountering in the upcoming months is: getting all of the paper work finalized for the April FE exam, studying to take FE exam in October, working on senior projects or thesis’s and making sure everything is lined up so that you can graduate on time in May.  Another stressful and important activity that undergraduates are doing is job searching.  With the current economy, it could be extra stressful as you don’t get the jobs that you want.
While getting a job for after college is important, you need to make sure that the job is right for you, and that you don’t take it just to say that you have a job.  Here is a list of things to consider when looking for that first job.

• Do they have any career development workshops or support?  Without career development, you could be stuck in your initial position for many years.  Career development support can also help you be more effective in front of clients and co-workers.  This can be covered in lunch-and-learns, in office workshops, or even attending workshops/seminars run by third parties.
• What kind of mentoring program do they have?  Will you work alongside a manager who helps mold you and offers guidance and shares their experience with you, or will they put you alone at a desk and let you “sink or swim”?
• Do they offer any kind of rotation program?  In college you take many classes, and sometimes have minimal exposure to certain parts engineering design.  Rotational programs are a good way to experience the different aspects of a project and see how different departments relate and rely on one another.  They can help you decide which area you want to focus on, and also allow you to gain knowledge on what you should or shouldn’t do so that it’s easy for other departments to execute or work off of your design.
• One of the major things to consider is the future of the position.  Are you going to be stuck in your position, or will you be able to grow with the position?  Will you be given more responsibility on a project, will you be able to run projects, or will you be a CAD technician until you leave or are let go?

While job searching can be time consuming and stressful, it is not something that you should take lightly.  This is something that will affect your future and could help make or break you as an engineer.  While it may be easy to accept a job offer and remove one item from your to-do list, it doesn’t mean that it will be the best position for your career?

BY : WILLIAM