undergrad looking for experience

get out your knee pads. i've had a EE for 10 years and NEVER did get a real engr job.

| Will accept unpaid experience. I have applied at a number of companies and | have thus far been unsuccessful obtaining any sort of position. | | Does anyone have any suggestions/hints on how to better go about this? | My GPA is average but I am keen to enter the workforce (albeit unpaid) ASAP.

Go to India.

And be hired by a US company.

Eric

If you don't want to get paid, you might as well do something YOU want to do. Otherwise you'll be stuck doing work one day and then the next day undoing all that work because the client changed their mind. Sitting in meetings (one daily hour-long management meeting eats up nearly two months of work time per year!). What you need right now is good practical experience, and as an unpaid intern the odds are you will never lay a finger on any work more involved than shuffling paper, taking notes at meetings, and making copies.

Are you a self-motivated type? If not, then maybe you do need someone else to tell you what to do. But if you can get up every morning at 7am even though you don't have to, then you should consider starting up one or two projects of your own. Surely you have some crazy idea for a gadget that just might work. Maybe you always wanted to build a robot. This could be the time to do it, and if you treat it as a real design project and make good documentation and photos, it could turn out to be a very impressive addition to your portfolio. Yes, some places rather prefer evidence that shows you will do as you are told and mind-numbingly grind away at tasks with little personal meaning, but do you really want to work at such a place? The people who develop a habit of doing cool things are the ones who get the cool jobs.

Thanks for the feedback. India is not quite what I had in mind lol. I have plenty of crazy ideas that "just might work" but lack the capital to make a robot of mass destruction at the moment, but doing my own projects does sound like fun.

If there aren't many real eng jobs out there, what do people with an EE degree do instead? I just found a wealth of engineering/mining companies in QLD to present my case to so hopefully I will be shuffling paper and taking notes within the next month!

Cheers Marc

Good luck, there are not many jobs to be had, or people that are willing to hire even for free for the experance...

I have an MS in electrical engineering, and I'm working as a tech, and have no idea how I will ever pay back the student loans, and be able to live here in California USA. As that would mean that I would have to make at least 50K per year, and I make barely over half that...

I do not know how the economy can be getting better here, when more and more engineers are being laid off, and there are no jobs for the graduates.

Go to your local TV-Radio fixit shop and sign on as an apprentice technician. You will learn more engineering seeing and fixing other "professional engineer's" bumbling mistakes than you can imagine.

You will also develop a good sense for not only how to design it, but how to design it for service.

Jim

"Marc W" shared these priceless pearls of wisdom:

->Hi all,

->Im currently 3rd year, bachelor of EE. I am based in Brisbane (Australia)

->and am looking for work experience.

SNIP

G'day

Goodluck getting your work experience, very important for getting a job at the end of your degree (as well as being a required part).

Theres plenty of mining companies around and they pay undergrads quite well, but they are after good people so you'll need to write a good application. Grades aren't everything either, if you can prove you are willing to learn, are interested and have some sort of practical experience you should find something. Most of the bigger companies have an undergrad work experience section on their web sites.

Try your local power company (Energex?), most of them usually take people on. They can offer pretty good experience too. There'll be shitloads of places in QLD that would take you, just have to sell yourself.

Try to get to work with someone who really knows their stuff, you learn a lot this way. As others have said hands on work is great, they dont teach much of that at uni. Try and get more than the minimum time if you can, you learn a lot that way and its a handy addition to your resume.

Goodluck

Thanks for your help guys, I think I will try for experience as a tech, or in a mining company. I have been undertaking a few uni projects, one of which will be implemented internationally so perhaps that will be something I can list as practical experience.

A few of my uni mates said that the city firms don't let undergrads touch ANYTHING remotely useful. Apparently what they do most of the time is implement changes to schematics and talk to the secretaries. I can understand their fear however as there are a few students in my course who I wouldnt trust with anything electrical even though they have been studying it for the past three years lol.

I got knocked back a few times as there were many applications for the same positions. I put that down to not selling myself correctly, like you said.

Anyway thanks for the suggestions, your advice will be taken!!

Cheers Marc