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3 months is plenty of time. Lindeburg's CE FE review book has a suggested 15-week study schedule.
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May 28, 2015 17:49
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So I'm finishing up my program and looking for a job, but I'm having a hard time selling my experience. Undergrad in Environmental Engineering, plus a thesis-based master's in Civil & Environmental (thesis project was anaerobic digestion of algae for biofuel, so more ENVE than CE). I have no internships. This is my issue. I spent a year as an undergrad research assistant, which led to a NSF grant to do an independent undergrad research project, which led to the school paying me to do a master's thesis. So I have tons of lab experience, operated a pilot biofuel facility, had teams of 15 assistants working for me as a grad student... But all at university, no private internships. I feel like my resumes are just getting tossed due to my lack of internships, but I think if I could just get to an interview I could explain my experience which is probably on par with what people would be doing at an ENVE internship. I think my cover letters have been overly wordy as I try and explain my experience. Any tips on selling research experience? I don't really want to work in research/in a lab, but I couldn't turn down a paid master's thesis and now I feel pigeonholed already.
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May 28, 2015 18:16
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IllIllIll posted:So I'm finishing up my program and looking for a job, but I'm having a hard time selling my experience.
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May 28, 2015 18:34
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Have you taken/will you take the FE? Where are you located? What sort of jobs/firms are you applying to? I just passed the FE but haven't submitted the paperwork/money to actually get the certificate. I'm located in California, looking exclusively in the bay area. I know everyone says to broaden your geographic search but this isn't really negotiable for personal reasons. I'm applying to civil/environmental consulting firms mostly. I started off strictly environmental but I took like 3 grad-level civil engineering classes this semester and now I feel a bit more confident to apply for CE jobs. I'm finishing classes in 2 weeks, then need to finish writing my thesis (ETA 1-2 months), so soon I'll pretty much be thesis-writing and job-seeking full time. I'll probably do the 40-hour HAZWOPER training in this time period too as something to throw on my resume, I see it pop up in applications all the time. Edit: Just submitted my FE paperwork. IllIllIll fucked around with this message at 01:57 on May 29, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 18:57
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The Navy came through with a ME job offer for 57k in Indiana. I'd be working in the Electro-optics Division of the Special Warfare and Expeditionary Systems Department. I imagine I'll be spending my day strapping lasers to sharks. My department head is of the opinion that 57k is on the low side, and I should be expecting 60-65k. He thinks I should negotiate for $62k. My institutional GPA at TSU, where I spent my last two years, is a 3.5. However, I transferred from another university with a very low GPA and my cumulative is still in the 2.5 range. I brought a lot of junk credits. I don't want to have them take a closer look at my transcript and rescind their offer. I think they already had a look at it anyway though, they had already requested my transcripts and gone through them AFAIK. Any advice? I've been doing research for the Navy on li-ion batteries for about a year and made a very good impression on their recruiting folks. They've kind of expedited the hiring process so far and really seem to want me in there. I also have about two years of in depth design experience through internships that would allow me to contribute much sooner than the typical recent grad hire. A friend of mine who works at a TVA plant in Chattanooga TN starts their recent grad hires at new 70k as well, although the work/life balance there is much worse.
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May 29, 2015 12:48
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Party Alarm posted:The Navy came through with a ME job offer for 57k in Indiana. I'd be working in the Electro-optics Division of the Special Warfare and Expeditionary Systems Department. I imagine I'll be spending my day strapping lasers to sharks. Can you negotiate? My experience with the DOD is that your experience and degrees check off a bunch of HR boxes, and the number they spit out is the number you're stuck with. That may depend on the pay system though, I'm GS and if you're in an org that uses pay banding they may have more flexibility.
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May 29, 2015 17:34
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Kolodny posted:Can you negotiate? My experience with the DOD is that your experience and degrees check off a bunch of HR boxes, and the number they spit out is the number you're stuck with. That may depend on the pay system though, I'm GS and if you're in an org that uses pay banding they may have more flexibility. This jives with my (second-hand) knowledge of pay for technical government jobs. If I recall correctly there are also explicit COL bumps based on geographic area, but I imagine Indiana doesn't get you much extra. However if you are doing real engineering R&D for the DoD then I'd guess you'd have a good trajectory for getting on the contractor gravy train in a few years. Don't forget that working for the DoD gives you the crazy-good government benefits too.
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May 29, 2015 18:32
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Apparently on the pay scale they offer for entry level (ND-02) they are offering me their highest pay scale, GS8. So that's the highest the offer on entry level. I decided to inquire about relocation assistance instead. Thanks for the advice!
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May 29, 2015 19:00
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Shear Modulus posted:This jives with my (second-hand) knowledge of pay for technical government jobs. If I recall correctly there are also explicit COL bumps based on geographic area, but I imagine Indiana doesn't get you much extra. Unless the number they gave you includes that already. GS-8 looks like it tops out at just under 50K according to the same wikipedia page, so I'm not sure. And the ND scale appears to have different locality adjustments than the GS scale. So ignore all that stuff I said before, I have no idea. https://mrmc-pdp.amedd.army.mil/ appears to have more info, but I have no experience with this so that's the best I can do. Olothreutes fucked around with this message at 19:29 on May 29, 2015 |
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May 29, 2015 19:12
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The 57k was including locality pay already, so that 14% increase was already factored in I believe
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May 29, 2015 19:14
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As long as you can hop on the TSP gravy train 
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May 29, 2015 21:10
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New hires have to pay more for FERS, and some other things. They basically passed new rules where you pay out of your gross and grandfathered in current employees. You absolutely can negotiate some, it will not cause you to lose your offer. Just tell them you have a proven track record of research for the Feds. The HR person might even tell you the absolute best they can do.
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May 29, 2015 21:22
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Can you guys recommend any of those resume writing services in SA Mart or elsewhere?
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May 29, 2015 21:41
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Going to your school's career services office or asking someone in this thread to look over your resume would probably do you more good. I think folks in this thread have asked for resume help before.
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May 29, 2015 22:53
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Boris Galerkin posted:Can you guys recommend any of those resume writing services in SA Mart or elsewhere? http://resumetointerviews.com/ I think they have a thread in SA for a coupon for goons. I used them. 6 months later, I discovered that a headhunting firm was using my redacted resume as their "example of a perfect resume."
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May 29, 2015 23:24
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KetTarma posted:http://resumetointerviews.com/ http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3722739 People in GBS are currently making GBS threads on that service v0v
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May 29, 2015 23:49
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KetTarma posted:http://resumetointerviews.com/ I used them as well and had a lot of success in my last job hunt. E: It was cheaper when I did it though...
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May 29, 2015 23:50
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If you get a job making 70k/yr because you spent 200$ on a resume, it'll take you less than your first day at work to pay for that service.
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May 30, 2015 02:17
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I've seen some shithouse resumes for positions that we've had open, so I can't really comment either way
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May 30, 2015 04:24
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IllIllIll posted:So I'm finishing up my program and looking for a job, but I'm having a hard time selling my experience. Environmental engineer jobs are hard to come by and pay lovely in the bay area. I have done work out there with my company (was actually out there last week). Move to the mountain west, Texas, or the Gulf and you'll be just fine. Otherwise, you can get a job with one of the enviro agencies (Dept of Fish and game, water resources board, bay area air quality district). These jobs pay pretty bad but its easy to leverage that experience into industry or EPA, both of which pay much better.
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May 30, 2015 06:14
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oxsnard posted:Environmental engineer jobs are hard to come by and pay lovely in the bay area. I have done work out there with my company (was actually out there last week). Move to the mountain west, Texas, or the Gulf and you'll be just fine. Otherwise, you can get a job with one of the enviro agencies (Dept of Fish and game, water resources board, bay area air quality district). These jobs pay pretty bad but its easy to leverage that experience into industry or EPA, both of which pay much better. Can you elaborate on why/which jobs are lovely in the bay area? I know many people from my program that have found jobs in the bay area (ARCADIS, Carollo, Geosyntec, Cornerstore Earth Group) so I'm not sure why you say this. As I said in my original post, geographic area is pretty fixed for me, so I'd rather work on finding a job even if it's not the best pay. I figure environmental is a small field, much smaller than civil (3000 nationwide jobs for ENVE vs 11,000 for civil on engineerjobs.com), so there's not just job opportunities flying all over the place. But I'm hoping to just get my foot in the door and take it from there. And yes I have asked those people who found work for references, nothing doing so far.
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May 30, 2015 06:45
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My information admittedly comes mostly from anecdotal information. If you look at the BLS data for environmental engineers though the employment index is 0.5 per thousand jobs which is reasonably large but from my understanding there's tons of people in the bay area who want to do the job. Los Angeles area has 3 times as many jobs in the field and even though the employment index is lower I can tell you that I get recruiters hitting me up to move to LA all the goddamn time (not doing it). You should decide what you want to do with your degree and go from there. Cali has very restrictive remediation rules so there are lots of these types of roles and I know its big money for companies like Arcadis. If you want to do air or water compliance you can get in with a state or district agency. Keep an ongoing search at their respective websites. I'm assuming that a large part of the reason that the employment index is as high as it is in the bay area is also because there are a poo poo ton of refineries and they hire lots of compliance people. I work in the oil industry and can tell you that none of the folks in these jobs started there fresh out of school. Most came from BAAQMD or CARB or one of the permitting/compliance consulting firms. edit: environmental consulting firms are the worst btw. They absolutely will ground you into dust the first 5 years you're there. Its a good way to get into the industry but you should be planning your escape as soon as you start oxsnard fucked around with this message at 14:12 on May 30, 2015 |
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May 30, 2015 14:09
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Why do you say environmental consulting firms are so bad? Anyway, I'd like to focus less on how there are no jobs and they suck and pay poorly... And more on my original question which is "how do I successfully sell my research experience, because it's all I have (I have a great GPA but who cares)?" Like I said I know plenty of folks from my school getting work in the bay, many with bachelors degrees, and I'll have a masters so surely it's not that terrible of an outlook.
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May 30, 2015 15:58
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The service is on the pricey side now, I won't disagree but it is a great process that will help you write a good resume in the future. If you have basically no idea what you're doing, it's worth it.
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May 30, 2015 18:51
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KetTarma posted:If you get a job making 70k/yr because you spent 200$ on a resume, it'll take you less than your first day at work to pay for that service. If you spend $200 on something you should be able to figure out how to do yourself because you think it will get you 70k/yr, you'll be broke forever. totalnewbie posted:If you have basically no idea what you're doing, it's worth it. I think there's just too many free resources to justify it. I'm not only talking about the internet either. Ask your school. Ask someone in HR at your coop/internship. Ask professors that are also in the business world. There are a lot of avenues. As a plus, going through the process of writing your own resume will probably also make you better at selling yourself in an interview.
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May 31, 2015 02:36
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I agree. The Virginia tech career services pages offer a lot of good information. I manage hiring for my facility, hourly and white collar, and my preferences for bringing people in are largely based on these recommendations. The resource will help you write a clear and concise guide to your experience and qualifications. https://www.career.vt.edu/ResumeGuide/Index.html Their thoughts: We're not going to tell you that you can't spend your money. But why do you need to? Your resume needs to be owned by you. You are the best qualified person to make statements about your background, experience and knowledge. You may need to revise your resume a bit for each job to which you apply (do you want to pay someone to do all that?). There is plenty of free advice, and as a student, we in Career Services are your service to advise you. (No, we don't write your resume for you.) If you're paying someone, how do you know you are receiving good advice or quality? (This writer/advisor viewed a resume that a student paid to have developed and it contained typos. Ouch.) If someone else writes your resume and an employer asks you for more detail about something on your resume or what a particular statement means, can you answer those questions well if you didn't write your own resume? Bottom line is our view is that you don't need to; it won't necessarily save you time; and it may not produce the best result.
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Jun 1, 2015 21:49
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Alright, I'll stick to doing it myself and posting excerpts here for feedback if this thread doesn't mind that. I think my main problem is that I'm not sure how to convey what I currently do into bullet points with action verbs and quantifiable metrics. Partly because I'm on a team so the things that I've accomplished haven't been done by me and me entirely, and also because I'm not sure how much I can get away with w.r.t. eg., NDAs and such. For example, here's a project I am currently working on: My client has a turbine blade that requires X amount of internal cooling. They want to investigate ways to cool it with less than X. I run baseline CFD simulations and my team and I propose to do x, y, and z and I implement those design changes and run the simulations. I present it to my client and the entire process is repeated. So my hangup is 1) I didn't come up with the ideas entirely so I don't feel it's right to put in my resume something like "developed method x to reduce …". Also 2) some of these "novel" ideas aren't really new, they've been done before/are patented (by the same client) and our client/customer contact basically tells us it's fine. 3) Nothing I do is for production products. 4) I am not totally sure what I can or cannot say. Like I don't know if I can specifically quote that something I did reduced cooling requirements by a specific percentage. #4 seems the most problematic because I don't even know who I can contact to clarify without giving big red flags that hey I want to leave this company. A second thing that I just remembered while reading one of these resume help websites is about patents. I worked on a project last year and we did something that a patent is submitted for. To be honest I don't know anything about how patents work, but I think it's in the "we submitted an application for this patent" phase. Should I mention this?
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Jun 1, 2015 22:53
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mitztronic posted:Thanks for the comments on NXP and Qualcomm. If anyone else knows anything or can provide insight on RF engineering I would really appreciate it. I am telling you this to motivate you to find a new job because FFS everyone wants to hire RF people what is wrong with you. Not because I am a braggy dick. I worked as a manufacturing engineer straight out of a BSME with ~3 years of during college experience and 2 published papers. I can interview well because I practice and study the topics in the description. Went to work at a well known silicon valley company. 91K base, 10K SOB, ~25K/yr Stock (depending on market) for 4 years, great benefits. I wasnt making a ridic salary either for the area. The only people making what you are in the bay area are at startups hoping to go public or get bought up and they are being granted equity. Lots of work and long hours were the trade off but jesus you're an EE in silicon valley.
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Jun 1, 2015 23:54
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By the way anyone who thinks that is good money, this calculator was about dead on money conversion wise: http://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator
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Jun 2, 2015 00:05
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Dead Pressed posted:I agree. Be careful of school career services though. I've seen some dreadful advice come through those (like those sample resumes, what's the whole Earned and financed X0% of college and living expenses even mean?) Also don't write your resume in Microsoft Word. Just learn a tiny amount of Latex to do it and boom you can put latex under skills. My tips for resume writing: - Make it easy to read - This is an engineering thread so put some goddamn class list on there. Don't put classes that everyone has to do like calc but what sets you apart - Don't put nebulous bullshit to fill up the resume like 'Managed a team of people on a project blah blah', if you can't think up of enough things learn some introductory basics of some thing related to your major and update your resume again in two weeks. - Get your resume reviewed by your boss at an internship, not by other students, career advisors, or professors (unless you're going into academia). - If you have a simple website that showcases your projects with videos and pictures, list it. Make sure the website doesn't really link anywhere unless directly related to your projects (i.e. linking to an award), and not your personal blog where you angst all over the place. A really impressive project log could reside here, but if its half assed and peters out with no updates just can that part. Keep the videos short like 30 seconds, just show, don't do audio notation of what's being shown unless you're good at that. Seriously engineering portfolios are really under appreciated and are way better at showing what you did than single sentences that start with an action verb. I always go check them out when a resume lists them that I receive. But like resumes keep them simple and show the most impact for a busy engineer who will at most spend 30 seconds there.
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Jun 2, 2015 02:34
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Can anyone recommend software for civil engineering planning that could be used by a layman?
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Jun 2, 2015 03:44
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What kind of planning? Subdivision layouts? Geometric roadway design? Something else?
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Jun 2, 2015 04:31
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Uncle Jam posted:Be careful of school career services though. I've seen some dreadful advice come through those (like those sample resumes, what's the whole Earned and financed X0% of college and living expenses even mean?) Also don't write your resume in Microsoft Word. Just learn a tiny amount of Latex to do it and boom you can put latex under skills. I do disagree with the finances part, but in general the VT guide is pretty good. I disagree completely with your word statement. Most people have no need to learn latex, and setting up a table in word for formatting is an easy way to make it look nice. Forget words' templates, though. quote:- If you have a simple website that showcases your projects with videos and pictures, list it. Make sure the website doesn't really link anywhere unless directly related to your projects (i.e. linking to an award), and not your personal blog where you angst all over the place. A really impressive project log could reside here, but if its half assed and peters out with no updates just can that part. Keep the videos short like 30 seconds, just show, don't do audio notation of what's being shown unless you're good at that. This is interesting to me, as I had pretty much zero project experience as a mining student except for senior design project; and that was so laughably stupid that it would have been completely counterproductive to show. Also, most miners have no need to learn jack all for coding.
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Jun 2, 2015 04:44
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scuzzy pumper posted:Can anyone recommend software for civil engineering planning that could be used by a layman? This question is way too broad... But probably not, because you won't know how to apply anything in it.
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Jun 2, 2015 07:16
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Dead Pressed posted:I do disagree with the finances part, but in general the VT guide is pretty good. I disagree completely with your word statement. Most people have no need to learn latex, and setting up a table in word for formatting is an easy way to make it look nice. Forget words' templates, though. It takes literally an hour from knowing nothing about latex to write a resume in latex. It is easier than basic HTML, if you're an engineer it should be no problem. A lot of people at my jobs use latex, because writing a long form document in Word is so dangerous. Its only a matter of time until the formatting becomes corrupted. poo poo like adding an undeletable page out of no where, bolding a word somehow creates tons of whitespace, wacky rear end tables. And forget trying to embed images in any kind of repeatable way. I used to be totally like psh who needs latex? until something similar happened to me. Believe me its super easy and another resume skill point. And you'll save tons of times writing documents at work, and they'll look better than your coworker's scrub word skills.
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Jun 2, 2015 14:45
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Boris Galerkin posted:Alright, I'll stick to doing it myself and posting excerpts here for feedback if this thread doesn't mind that. I think the understanding is that you're working on a team, rather than the expectation that you did all of this by yourself. Save the clarification of "What was your role" for the interview, just list "developed method for blah" and leave it there. If you don't have a copy of the NDA to review, just be general. "made significant reductions in cocurrent eddy generation, resulting in modeled cooling efficiency gains."
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Jun 2, 2015 17:32
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Vaporware posted:I think the understanding is that you're working on a team, rather than the expectation that you did all of this by yourself. Save the clarification of "What was your role" for the interview, just list "developed method for blah" and leave it there. Yeah that makes sense. Thanks.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:10
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Uncle Jam posted:It takes literally an hour from knowing nothing about latex to write a resume in latex. It is easier than basic HTML, if you're an engineer it should be no problem. If someone on my team started writing documents in latex I'd get super annoyed because they would be making documents that couldn't be handed off to someone else. I can do some latex, but would never even consider using it at work unless it became the standard in the office somehow.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:45
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I've recently started a new job, and it's in the public sector. So there's no fancy coffee machines or Starbucks in the office. And when you've got people coming in for a meeting, custom dictates that you put a pot of coffee on. Which I'm more than happy to do, and prep the room for my meeting. At what point, and I'm not condoning this behaviour, does it become OK to ask the office admin to do that for you? The Chief Executive gets her to put the coffee on and biscuits out, but he's happy to stand shooting the poo poo with us for 20 minutes. I couldn't ever imagine getting into a position of asking someone else to prep a room for my meeting, maybe I'm not as busy as them? But 5 minutes to fill a pot of water and put filter paper in. If someone hasn't got 5 minutes, then they don't have time to poo poo, let alone think.
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Jun 3, 2015 16:58
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I would expect setting up meeting rooms, including providing coffee, to be part of the office administrator's job description.
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Jun 3, 2015 17:35
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