In reply to tuna55:
Ill send you a PM later this week if that's okay.
I am also going to talk to some contacts I have overseas. So maybe I won't take so much time off, seems like it might be harder to get back into my related field than I would have thought.
You could do an apprenticeship. You would be learning and getting paid at the same time.
As a trades person having worked in two different trades (Machinist and Electrician), it seems the engineers with real field experience have a leg up on the others.
Just a few more cents to throw in...
paranoid_android74 wrote: As a trades person having worked in two different trades (Machinist and Electrician), it seems the engineers with real field experience have a leg up on the others.
There is a lot of truth right there ^^^^.
I personally have found (in the professionsl engineering world) that large companies rarely care about experience that isn't directly related to what they want...
Of course, in Canada, the job market is extremely certification/education driven. If a company wants a chemical engineer, they want a chemical engineer. They don't want an associates/diploma.
Personally, you should really look at narrowing your experience IMO. A jack of all trades is good at none. Being a firefighter will mean diddly to a company if you apply for an engineering position. Being a machinist MAY help. Or they may hire you on only your engineering degree, and it simply turns out that being a machinist does help you at your job.
My point is, you will be most successful at starting one thing, not many things. Gain experience, then branch out.
I've been developing analytical systems for the first 5 years of my career, and I still know berkeley all. But I'm the guy they call when equipment is having issues so the big oil producers don't get their licences to operate pulled.
Sure, my extracurricular activites help me do this with the skills I've gained, but at the end of the day, its my attitude and willingness to work hard/learn that make the difference (IMO).
I made the mistake of trying to find my niche early in my career and sell the fact that I went to school part time for 3 years while finding that niche. Later, potential employers informed me that it was a sign that I lacked direction (something that many 18-23yr old lack) so I started leaving all the minutia off my resume and sticking to one theme (mapping). I'd rather answer the gaps in my employment in an interview than waste time putting all of them down on paper.
My suggestion for a young buck outta college is to get your adventures out of the way right now. I made the mistake of wasting 3-4 years of my 8 year Bachelor's pursuit trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and I still don't know because life has changed. At 26, most of my friend had 2-3 years on me in terms of experience with a single company, and they had no interest in leaving "home". I had the same amount of experience, but with 3 different companies, none of which I really wanted to stay at. Now at 30 I've got a great job with a good company, but I'm not ready to settle down in the place I've spent 30 years of my life. I want to travel, relocate, and live for today, but I NEED a solid 3-5 years of steady employment with the same company in order to make the interview lists.
If you're graduating on time, you've got at least 1-3 years before you have to settle down into years with a single company. As an engineer you should be able to find work just about anywhere. If I were in your position, I'd be headed to coolest cities in America. Flagstaff, Santa Cruz, Boulder, Asheville, Burlington, Tahoe, Grand Junction.
You may get a great job that you really enjoy, but suddenly realize 2 year in that you hate the location. 10 year later you might still be in the same house with kids and a wife and the opportunity to try a new place will have come and gone.
Honestly I would take the summer have an adventure and then find a job.
I would suggest looking at smaller companies/ startups. They are great right out of college. There is somewhat of a boom or bust to them but being young without a wife or kids makes that less of worry. Also being a small company means a large variety of work which at least to me keeps work more interesting then having to do the same thing over and over again.
93EXCivic wrote: Honestly I would take the summer have an adventure and then find a job. I would suggest looking at smaller companies/ startups. They are great right out of college. There is somewhat of a boom or bust to them but being young without a wife or kids makes that less of worry. Also being a small company means a large variety of work which at least to me keeps work more interesting then having to do the same thing over and over again.
Do you know how to find jobs with those smaller companies? The career fairs at my university are absolutely dominated by massive companies.
fritzsch wrote:93EXCivic wrote: Honestly I would take the summer have an adventure and then find a job. I would suggest looking at smaller companies/ startups. They are great right out of college. There is somewhat of a boom or bust to them but being young without a wife or kids makes that less of worry. Also being a small company means a large variety of work which at least to me keeps work more interesting then having to do the same thing over and over again.Do you know how to find jobs with those smaller companies? The career fairs at my university are absolutely dominated by massive companies.
My only two jobs have been with small companies. The first I found via the local autocross board and the second I found on Linkedin.
Get on Linkedin if you aren't already. Then network, network, network. Your professors might know people. Strike up conversations with people at none work functions. If your city has a young professionals organization join that. Study industries you might be interested in and look for articles on up and coming companies.
As a differing view point, firefighting is a rewarding job and can make you decent money if you stick with it. Not ME money, but still...
And you can probably even utilize your ME degree in it, learning weak points in buildings, coming up with new tools and equipment to make the job easier or safer. If you decide you don't like it and want to go back into ME work, you could probably articulate that into real world experience if you try.
When I was younger firefighting scared me with all the blood and gore. Now I probably couldn't get in because of my age (30) but the blood and gore don't bother me anymore.
Really, seriously, do some adventures. You don't need money. Just a few tanks of gas and a reliable car will get you from one side of the country to the other. You'll have a great story to tell potential employers.
Shoot me a PM. I'm a software engineer, not a mechanical engineer, but I also select resumes, conduct phone screens, and run in-person interviews for software developer positions.
I've been out of this thread for a while, I'm not sure where you want to go with it. I don't think you'll be destitute forever if you go off and bum around for years. People in this thread have proven that life can turn out just great after doing that. What I will advise is that the longer you're away, the harder it will be to get back in to your degree-related field. You may find great success in another field; perhaps you should have even been in something else from the start; but the value of your GPA, course load, and school name will plummet with every month you're away.
I promise I'm not all doom and gloom, and I'm really not trying to be a dick. But I've made career mistakes in my life and I'd like to help other people avoid those pitfalls.
Another great option is to get that sweet awesome job, work it for 3-5 years, then go on sabbatical.
Ok, well no-one takes sabbatical anymore, but we need to, BRING BACK THE SABBATICAL! HURRAY!
One thing- if you really like firefighting and mechanical engineering, while fire is a chemical process, it's dicipline actually falls under the umbrella of mechanical engineering.
Which is to say that you can easily be an engineer for a company that works on firefighting of some type. All that stuff that is used to fight fires- from the big planes to the small attachments all have to be designed by engineers. And knowing how flames progress and move can be an engineering process.
But one thing- try to find an actually carreer. Don't go in with the mindset that you plan on moving all the time- that bugs me to see that happen. Then again, I would love to see the return of the actual pension- since it's original goal was to entice people to come to a job and stay.
Honestly, in your position I'd start working. As someone else said, there's no easier time to get a job than right out of college.
There are too many millennials out there who are struggling to find themselves. By getting a job and sticking with it for at least two years, you'll have differentiated yourself from your peers. It's always easier to go from a harder job to an easier one, but it's tougher to go the other way. I know someone who's been working at a supermarket for 10 years, and he's having a tough time breaking into the white collar job market, even though he has the skills to do so (two college degrees, sharp, hard-working guy). I'm working with another person who graduated from Dartmouth with honors and is having trouble finding a job because she had one for a year and a half, quit to go into a doctoral program, and then decided the program wasn't for her. She's smart and has a stacked resume, but her lack of consistent work experience is really hurting her right now.
If you decide at some point that a corporate job doesn't do it for you, you can pursue other options.
With that being said, you don't need to accept just any job. Do your due diligence and seek out a company and a position that's the best fit for you. Put an emphasis on a company you like who's willing to invest in and promote their own employees. You'll likely change job titles many times over your career, your experience and education are the two things that no one can take away from you.
I didn't mention this before but to just give you an idea how life can change.
I turn 40 in a year and I started my going to school for metallurgical engineering. Did a couple of years and just got burnt out so I thought it was a good time to take a break and live in the work a day world. Got a good gig working with GE transportation as a contractor. Traveled the world....lived out of a car and a rented room for almost 2 year.
I didn't see any long term growth there. So I went back to school to finish my degree. 2 years off in the middle of an engineering program and I struggled really bad to get back in the swing of things. Got behind on the GPA 8 ball and struggled to get back on top. Got into building race cars and dirt-track racing on the side for cash. (Mostly IMCA Modifieds) Did a couple more summers with GE and then left school still without a degree.
Got on with MCI in the sales side and did pretty well there. Moved up the ranks quickly and then got into a project manager's role. Worldcom bought them out and then things started to go down hill. My division got cut in the downturn of the company and I was without a job. Got a fair amount of offers but all for well under what I was earning and living in Chicago was too expensive to take a pay cut.
Left Chicago and Moved to Austin, Texas and got a job with Dell back in sales. Moved up some but hit a road block about 4 years in and started looking around and took a role with APC. Spent 3 and a half years traveling around the south and southwest as an outside partner manager for them. I traveled and was finishing my degree at night. Making great money but was totally stressed out.
Decided the travel and school was too much so I took a job back with Dell as a sales Lead without the travel. I'm not a naturally born sales guy. I just worked hard enough at it to succeed. It's definitely not my naturally given profession. Well, 3 years later...I got a chance to be back where I wanted and that is in project management. I've been on a global PMO team for almost a year now and love it. I travel some and work with people from all over the world. I've been working on transforming the Dell Sales structure.
So why do I mention all of this. Well 2 reasons.
I never expected to be where I am now. I had a great job I was being nurtured for in the metallurgy lab at the Union Pacific. I made my life 100X more difficult with the route I took.
I am well behind my peers on earnings and position. Even though it's a 6 figure job I have now, most of my peers my age that worked straight through are into middle management now.
Life will take a lot of weird turns. Very few of us ended up exactly where we figured we would be. As you look at things though, making life a lot more difficult down the road taints the short term fun you may have. I don't regret anything I've done in my life but looking back....man I really beat myself up to get where I am.
Join the military. Take a commission in the Air Force or Navy and see the world on Uncle Sams dime.
+1
peter wrote:novaderrik wrote: Just get a job.. if you don't like it, get a different one.This. Find work that energizes you and that you're passionate about. That can cut both ways, but when it's working in your favor, it really makes the days fly by. If you don't find it on the first try, find something else. And don't drop the first job until after you've secured the second one, no matter how disagreeable it is. Old farts stick with one employer for life. The new generation jumps around, that's to be expected. As you've laid it out now, your future resume would throw up a lot of red flags and I guarantee you'll have trouble finding and adjusting to that first engineering job, should you ever decide to go back. You get used to the 8-5 thing pretty quick and you'll get better at using the 5-11pm and weekend time to decompress. Find something energizing to do during that 8-5 period, whether it's specializing in a particularly gnarly bit of your field, or working in an industry that speaks to you. I'm sorry you had E36 M3ty internships or co-ops. They should have brought some life to the work you were doing, but they didn't and that's their failure. Now you need to go find work that will ignite that spark for you. Tell us what it is about mechanical engineering that got you interested in that field in the first place. What mech-e stuff do you do in your spare time? The hive-mind may be able to help guide you towards something you'll really like.
I quoted this so you would read it again. So go ahead and read it again, I'll wait. 
I agree with everyone in here that's telling you to get that engineering job now. I'd quote everyone's post but this one will do.
It took me 9 months to find a ME job back in 2005. Yeah, I sit at a desk most weeks for 40 hours. But when I leave work, I'm done. No more work until I walk back through that door. I jump in the Miata and do whatever I want. I have money to do the things I want to do. My job can be boring but it can also be pretty interesting. I work to live.
In reply to peter:
PM sent
I missed this post.
I absolutely agree- I tried to do this after I started working, four separate times- and couldn't get it done before the clock ran out on me.
The wrote:Join the military. Take a commission in the Air Force or Navy and see the world on Uncle Sams dime.+1
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