Mechanical Engineering

Employment; Strategies for a Job Hunt



Web Resources for a Job Search

Post your resume on the World Wide Web and find job listings:

If you do not find a job in 6 to 12 months after you graduate with your engineering degree, think about applying for temporary engineering jobs or taking an engineering class as a non-matriculated graduate student. This will show employers you are still interested in engineering and keeping your engineering skills up to date.

Networking and Career Fairs

Networking

Networking is talking to people you know to find job leads. Some sources of people to network with for your job search include:

Career Fair Resources:



Find a Mentor

Participate in the ME Department faculty mentoring program. The Department of Mechanical Engineering sponsors a faculty mentoring program for undergraduate students to give students an opportunity to have personal contact with a ME professor outside of the classroom.

Nineteen professors in the Department have volunteered for the mentoring program. Students have the opportunity to meet with a professor who is interested in getting to know the student personally. It is the Department's hope that the mentoring program will provide students with the opportunity to seek advice from a professor about long-term goals and career plans, suggestions for finding a job, locating a graduate school, and what technical elective classes to take. The faculty mentoring program is a voluntary program meant to augment other student-faculty contacts and we encourage all students to seek mentoring advice during any professor's office hours, even if the professor is not your mentor.

Women In Engineering Mentoring Program

Make Personal Business Cards

Include your name, address, phone number, degree and anticipated date of graduation. Give these to people who you talk to about your career.

Make Your Own Web Page

Making your own web page is not difficult. If you are enrolled at the UW you can get an account at Computing & Communications. Here they also explain the policies and procedures for the content of the student personal web pages and they have resources for creating web pages.

If you are no longer enrolled at the UW or expect to have this web page up longer than the remainder of your stay at the UW, there are a number of places to get free web space, including: Tripod, Geocitites, Angelfire, NetScape, Etc. Once you have an account it's time to get started on your page. Most of the sites with free accounts have tutorials and instructions on creating a web page. Below are some additional resources.

There are hundreds of resources on the Net about creating web pages. You will get some conflicting information but it is usually on the side of personal taste (what colors make good backgrounds, whether or not you should specify font, etc.). Use your best judgment. Your web page should reflect the information within. Since this page is about you, it should reflect your personality. The best advice for making a web page is: keep it uncluttered and focused on the information your trying to convey.

Join a Professional Engineering Organization

Mechanical Engineering Professional Organizations include:


Go to the monthly meeting of your Engineering Professional Organization. Talk to engineers and ask for a business card from engineers you talk to and then give then your "personal" business card. Write down on the back of the card or in a notebook what you discussed, or outline stories told to you. Later when you are ready to begin your job search, you can use this information to call up this person and start a conversation about jobs in their company. Become active in the student chapter of the engineering professional organizations and become an officer, work on a committee or attend a conference. It is a great way to make contacts and learn cutting edge technology in your field.

UW ME Department Student Societies Page

Informational Interviews

Locate a company you are interested in working for i the future. Ask an engineer in that company for an informational interview. Use the following guidelines for the informational interview:

Keep track of networking. Then follow up when you begin your search for an internship or when you begin your final job search. Start a job search log with the date your resumes were sent, then wait a week or two and telephone, e-mail or make a personal visit.

Other Places to Search