engineering jobs anyone?

[ret]

You start small.
Either get a paid/un-paid internship with a race team (hard to get BTW.)
Or get some kind of grunt job working for an automobile manufacturer. (again internships.)

You learn tips and tricks from your mentor, and if you're good enough fast enough... they may have a position for you in the future after you've gained experience.

I can't stress the EXPERIENCE part enough... this speaks volumes over education when it comes to being hired, however your salary will cap quickly w/o it.

Don't stop after your undergrad either.
In my profession, you can't make more than 100k/yr w/o a masters.

Definitely the way to go, even if it's just CAD work for a consulting firm, you're getting your foot in the door and exposing yourself to the world of engineering. Besides, the first few years of engineering, likely anything, is just going to be grunt work anyways. May as well head into that knowing what you're doing, showing your competent and speeding up the process to where you'll actually be doing significant engineering work.

That's pretty much what I'm doing at least. I'm the guinea pig of a new engineering school in VA and pretty much banking on my job as a CAD designer to get me anywhere in life.. Hopefully it'll help me get into a REAL school like PSU or UF. :icon_bigg

 

[MK3Brent]

I should correct my previous statement...A masters/phd will open the door to a research job that could not be obtained with a B.Sc.

I suppose it is different for everyone, and a lot of that is based on the education/program. 90% of my current position was in no way covered in University, which is why I chose not to go back to school.

Excellent advise on going back to school with the state of the current economy though.

Same here.
I was afraid my company division wanted only electrical engineers, given we design and research instrument transformers... but soon after being hired I found out there's a bunch of mechanical design and production problem solving to be done. (My specialty / experience.)

Sometimes getting your foot in the door anywhere can really open your eyes to the "real world" of engineering, not the boring classroom stuff.