Hello, my name is Sam. I am currently in my final year undergraduate study of Engineering. Every time I talked to others about my major, especially my relatives in china, I got lots of replies like “That’s great, you’re good, it must be easy for you to get a job.” At that moment I could say nothing but reply with a bitter smile. Engineering might sound more competitive than Business or Art in the recruiting market, and it has been considered as a profession that mainly rely on hard skills and experiences to develop steadily. Different from IT, Engineering careers are more stable and may seem like Engineering students don’t need to develop networking skills or something they are not quite good at. In the opinions of elders, “the more senior the more valuable.” But now I have to say, this is really not the case.
First of all, there were lots of different directions in Engineering, including airlines, military, biomedical, chemical and others. Airlines and military firms only look for local or regional citizens, biomedical and chemical firms do not offer many job opportunities to graduates. EE has the most opportunities, but there are also many local EE students competing for jobs. Thinking of applying for jobs after graduating, many EE students plan to transfer to study master of computer science.
I have been busy doing projects and coursework in university in the first 3 years. I only had one internship experience during vacation, which was hardly related to Engineering profession. When I was in my senior year of study, one course I had studied required internship opportunities from a local professional-related firm. At that moment I was truly facing the difficulty of finding a job. I sent out a lot of resumes and there was no reply from any desired firms.
After that I saw the internship program from Ecare team. I thought I could give it a try, so I contacted them and consulted for the program. After all I doubted whether I could find an internship when I graduate if I progressed with such a slow pace. Then I signed up for Ecare’s internship program. The Ecare team targeted one specific Engineering firm for me, proofread and updated my resume to meet their major requirement. The career coach also gave me lots of useful tips and instructions for the formal interview.
During the mock interview, the teacher asked me a lot of professional details as well as some personal interests. She helped me a lot with figuring my strengths, weaknesses and gave me professional advice. For example, I couldn’t fake to become extrovert and talkative, but I could focus on my thoughtfulness and observant. Also, I could improve my talking skills during the interview.
I was happy to receive the internship offer successfully in one week. Now it has been the second month of the internship period, and I have been put into a project team already. My colleagues are all very nice. The firm is very friendly to international students and they provided lots of warm-up activities for me at the beginning. Now I strongly hope I can gain more knowledge and networking via this internship, and I also hope Engineering students manage to find their desired jobs. Many thanks to Ecare team.
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