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Hmmm. It sure has been a while since I have posted! I seem to be missing the whole month of April. Sorry about that!

Things have been crazy, but I am still alive. So here’s the cliff notes version of April:

• School
• Work
• I helped build a train track around the boy’s room.
• School
• Work
• I went to Munich for a Hyperthermia Conference
• School
• Work
• I gave a couple of presentations on protiens including measuring denaturing energy with an atomic force microscope and computational methods for simulating folding.
• School
• Work
• School
• Work

More updates in the near future.

This is the second post in a series on getting your first engineering job, you can find part one here.

I wanted to cover a couple of things related to that first job; things that I learned along the way, both when I was looking for work and in the last couple years looking at resumes.

There are lots of places on the internet to get advice on all aspects of the job search, from resumes, to cover letters, to interviews, and follow up. The things mentioned here are what I noticed, and more specific to job searches that I have experienced rather than the basics covered elsewhere.

For job openings you could scour the classifieds (or the latest equivalent, craigslist), but online job searches seem pretty efficient. Networking is also very productive, people that belong to the professional organizations where you are a student member, some of the “non-traditional” students that have jobs, previous places where you worked as an intern (and enjoyed it).

For the resume preparation, I have a few tips that I don’t often see in other resume writing articles. But first there is something I want to emphasize, that is oft repeated elsewhere: The purpose of the resume isn’t to get you a job. The purpose of the resume is to get you an interview. So for resumes, here’s the advice I have:

• Customize it: For every job you apply for or every time you forward your resume, you need to tailor it to the job.
• Layout for 5 seconds: With a stack of resumes to go through, the first screening pass ignores the header info, and scans down the left side for important things. If you don’t make the 5 second cut, it doesn’t matter if you are the perfect candidate.
• Include unique or applicable classes: If you have an mechanical engineering degree, you shouldn’t take up space listing Thermodynamics or Dynamics as a class you took. Put the electives that demonstrate your training or classes that will be a direct benefit to the job you are applying for.
• Include software packages: Often the key attributes for filling an entry level position includes familiarity with a specific software package, so list those that you are familiar with. “I need someone that knows LabView” or “If they knew MATLAB, that would be nice!” are phrases often heard, just subsitute software applicable to the job.

There is a relatively new aspect to resume submittal that I don’t see covered very often. When applying to some of the larger companies around, it is often necessary to submit your information through their website. If they don’t have a way to attach a file like a word document or a pdf, then you are going to have to submit it through the text box. The problem? Well the text box strips out the formatting. Just try taking that nicely formatted Microsoft Word resume (the one that you have slaved over for hours if not days) and cutting and pasting it into the text box. It isn’t exactly the clean, easy to read presentation that you need to get past the initial screening process.

So what can you do about this? Well the answer is another version of your resume. One that you write in a text editor without tabs, bullets, or other formatting. A plain text editor like Notepad in Windows or TextEdit in OS X.

One other thing related to electronic submissions. Searchable keywords are being included as a part of the resume submittal process. Now, in and of itself this isn’t a bad thing. Unless the search that is used to find candidates that match particular requirements isn’t very sophisticated. Consider the wording. If you have experience in solid modeling, and used PTC’s Pro/Engineer software, you might want to use that as a keyword. So you add “Pro/Engineer”. But the engineering manager that is looking for a new hire was in a hurry when they wrote the job description and the human resources person doesn’t know anything about solid modeling. So they searched the term “ProE”, or “ProEngineer”, or “Pro/E”. Actually the last one might bring up a hit, since it is a subset of “Pro/Engineer”. So if there are options for the way a skill will be searched, try to include as many of these as possible in your keyword list.

With all of the ways that your information can get lost, never looked at, or just ignored, it becomes more important than ever to get around the HR hurdle and get your resume in front of those managers that are looking for someone like you. This might be unwelcome news for the introverts in engineering, but the networking is very important.

I think there will be one final installment to this series, with a few tips and observations about the interview.

A former professor of mine has asked me to give a talk to his senior design class about how to get a job. This has got me thinking lately: how do you get that first job after graduation?

The first lesson for any engineer should be “any conclusions made from a single datum point should be highly suspect”. Since this whole series is based on just my experience, you should view it more as an opinion than gospel. My experience is around Mechanical Engineering training, and getting a job working in medical devices, but it might work with some translation for other degree programs and industries.

We’ll start from the beginning. You have to decide what interests you; after all we are talking about your career here. Something about mechanical engineering drew you to the degree program, so there must be appeal in some aspect of the industry. When I started in school, I was going to work in aerospace. Rockets, satellites, or whatever, it didn’t matter. I wanted to work in that industry, and that’s what drew me to an ME program. Many people I know started in ME because of their interest in cars.

But you have learned more about the various industries as you have progressed through school. Maybe there are areas you had never considered before. But now that you know more about the discipline, it is worth spending some time re-examining your career goals.

• What topics in class have you enjoyed? Note that that is topics not professor personality.
• Student memberships in the professional associations come with a magazine and often a second that is targeted at students. These will give a cross-section of possibilities too.
• People. Networking is a fact of life, you might as well get used to talking to them now. Engineering contacts at companies are orders of magnitude more useful than HR contacts.
• Research areas for your professors are involved in are normally targeted at specific industries. You don’t need to become an expert, just know what’s out there.
• Read. Search the internet. Seek out the possibilities.

There are lots of aspects to mechanical engineering (just look at the different divisions within ASME), and there are jobs in all of them. That is just within one professional organization, there are dozens more that work with engineers.

Once you have an idea of what you want to do, take steps to tailor your education in that direction. Electives, internships, co-ops, student organizations, senior projects, and volunteer work are all opportunities to steer your career. The idea is to make it clear from your entire resume that you are headed toward a job in a particular area, not just the two-line objective at the top.

Now, if you think this takes time, you are right. If you think this should be considered long before the first resume goes out, you are right. If you are in your last semester and just now thinking about a job, is everything hopeless? No, I don’t think so, but it sure would make it easier if you start early.

In the next post, we’ll get into cover letters, resumes, and why keywords are your friends.

Every once in a while, an e-mail comes through that reminds me that I work in a strange place.

_________________________________________________________________________________
From: LAB MANAGER
Sent: Yesterday
To: EVERYONE THAT WORKS WITH TISSUE

Subject: Missing Liver

If anyone is missing a liver, it’s in the RF Ablation lab with Tony’s name on it.

It looks like the truth-in-advertising regulations caught up with engineering recruiting.

The other day at work we got a notice that the 2008 IRS rate for mileage reimbursement was being increased to 50.5 cents per mile. For 2007 it was 48.5 cents per mile. Now it is my understanding that this is supposed to cover the cost of operating a vehicle for business purposes. So lets ponder that for a minute.

Let’s assume that there is no increase in maintenance costs for your vehicle (which isn’t true, but makes this a conservative calculation). That leaves changes in the cost of gasoline as the major contributor to the cost hike.

I drive a truck that gets about 16 miles per gallon (MPG). Given the vehicle I drive, and the increase of two cents per mile, this would cover the increase in cost of gasoline to the tune of 32 cents per gallon. But it turns out that in Colorado, the last year saw an increase of 73.8 cents per gallon, according to the Department of Energy. (That number will change weekly, I’m sure)

That means I would have to drive a car that got 36.9 MPG. More than twice what I actually get. So that got me thinking: “What kind of car would I have to drive to have the actual increase in cost covered?”

It turns out that, according to the EPA, for 2008 models, nothing but hybrids will hit 36.9 mpg. In fact, even most of the hybrids miss the mark. Only the hybrid Prius and Accord exceed that MPG rating.

“But wait!”, you say. “These numbers aren’t decided by Colorado! It is for the country as a whole!”

“Good point”, I say. For the US as a whole, it went up only 70.7 cents per gallon. So our meager improvement still only brings the necessary MPG rating to 35.3. That doesn’t change much related to the cars.

It just makes you wonder how they come up with these numbers.

Over the course of research related activities, I have had the privilege (duty? requirement?) of reading lots of journal articles. Hundreds of them.

As a result of this, I have one complaint: I hate the word “novel”. Not in the nounish “I wrote a novel” form, but in the adjective-ish “my new technique is novel” form.

I just feel like it is presuming too much. I don’t think the originator of an idea is the proper person to pass judgment on how novel it is. “Unique” is fine, you can tell me it is unique. “Useful” is fine too, though you should probably tell me why it is useful, because useful to you is not necessarily useful to me. “Novel” just strikes me wrong. A little too self-congratulatory.

As far as rants go, this one is pretty minor. But it still bugs me.

A lot of what I do revolves around presentations. As an engineer and as a student. Both as presenter and as audience. At conferences, in the office, at school, practically everywhere. Even church. (I was the guest lecturer pulpit guest on Labor Day Sunday, which was basically a presentation without PowerPoint^TM.)

Powerpoint^TM. Anyone that has seen more that two PowerPoint^TM presentations has seen a bad one.

Even Edward Tufte, the legend of presenting data, has a booklet on PowerPoint^TM presentations.

But as my public service for today, in order to make (my) world a better place, I give you Death by Powerpoint^TM, an excelent tutorial on presentations. Review it while preparing your next presentation, it will make it better.

There are always interesting things at the exposition halls that accompany most conferences that I have been to. IEEE and ASME meetings have vendors with really cool measurement systems, books you can’t find anywhere else, and other fun and exciting things for those with skewed interests such as me.

Working for a medical device company, I have attended shows that are meant for physicians, places like SAGES, or ACS. Those expos are full of other strange and interesting things. It took a little while to get used to the videos of surgery or some of the more heinous devices people were showing, but all in all it was cool stuff.

It was all good until I walked though the exposition hall of the annual meeting of the AAGL. (Go ahead and click the link to see who they are… I’ll wait.)

There are things I never needed to know existed. Most of them are in that room.

I’m just sayin’.