Engineering Career and Job Hunting Advice for February 2017

While looking around the Web for good job search and career enhancement articles, an piece by The Savvy Intern's Lauren Kirkpatrick titled "Millennial Stereotype Busted: 'Paying Your Dues' is Bullsh*t," struck a chord. It's a short piece and, as you might guess from the title, somewhat naively attitudinal (a 2013 graduate). However, she does bring up a good point about how the world has changed from even as recently as the 1980s when I first hit the tech job market. In both the technician and engineer world, there was definitely a 'pecking order' in most larger companies whereby initial hiring and promotion were subject to seniority. My first job as an electronics technician at Westinghouse, after getting out of the U.S. Air Force, had me starting at the bottom of the heap on the evening shift. Promotion to the next level nearly always required waiting for the guy above you to move up the ladder, then you filled his position. Jumping a place in line was usually met with scorn from fellow workers, so it rarely happened. That hierarchic system is still very much a part of the union membership experience, but most of the rest of the companies, at least in the U.S., have abandoned it out of a struggle to survive.

• Millennial Stereotype Busted: "Paying Your Dues" is Bullsh*t, by Lauren Kirkpatrick
• College Activities that Help You Build Career Skills, Campus to Career
• 5 Tricky Engineering Job Interview Questions, Nader Mowlaee
• Looking for a Job? Don't Tell LinkedIn, Robert Hellmann
• LinkedIn Checklist: Shape up Your Profile for a Successful Job Search, The Savvy Intern
• How to Win in the 2017 Hiring Boom, Ray Bixler
• Solving an Impossible Brain Teaser in a Tech Interview, Jeremy Schifeling
• How to Be the Least-Liked Person at the Office, By Jenni Maier
• 5 People Types You're Competing Against in a Job Search, By Jenny Foss

Posted February 21, 2017