Getting your first job

[Six]

What sort of positions are best for getting your foot on the ladder and learning about electronics?

I've been volunteering at a Pro Audio manufacturer whilst I do my degree. Nearly all of the Engineers have told me that you learn nothing really useful at uni and I should look for an entry level job.

The only things I can find in my area are mundane soldering jobs. Is it worth my while contacting manufacturers and expressing my interest or should I wait until I finish my course?

I'm based in the UK.

Cheers!

[8086]

Whereabouts in the UK are you? I might be able to tell you some electronics companies to send speculative applications to.

The issue employers may have is that you're going to be away at uni quite often.

If you just want experience they will most likely be willing to take you on a part time basis in a design role - there is not much point in taking on a soldering job if you want to be doing design. Soldering isn't an entry level electronics design job.

If you're honest about what you can offer, and why you're doing it, I see no reason you shouldn't be able to get some design experience. Whether you're going to get paid for it is another matter. What do you get up to at your pro audio manufacturer volunteering? Any design work? Are you after a paycheck or just experience for now?

Or are you looking for after you finish your degree? If so, you really don't want to be looking at soldering. I only have a HNC and I've been in a design job and currently trialling for another better one, so it is entirely possible to walk into a design role when you're done with your degree.

[Six]

That would be brilliant. Thank you! I'm based in the North West. Liverpool and surrounding areas.

I'm off for the summer now so plenty of time to kill. I've been fixing and taking apart anything I can get my hands on but there's only so much you can do at your kitchen table.  The concepts we learn at uni are great but hands on, in a pro environment, is really where I'll earn my stripes.

I'm working on the bench, at my current place, just one day a week. Wiring up audio systems, point to point, PCB, rework and fault finding etc. Very basic stuff but I'm just happy to be in a workshop mixing with the guys and picking their brains. I don't get paid for it but that isn't an issue at the moment. Experience and becoming a better engineer is.

I've got all the usual good grades at A Level. Maths, Physics and ICT. I did a Level 3 in General Engineering at college and I'm going into my second year of a BEng Electronics degree in September.

I don't mind traveling (I have a car) and I'm a bit older than your average student at 33. I'm ex forces and have a background in logistics and aviation. Reliable, creative, hard working and able.

I appreciate any advice. Thanks again!

Scott

[8086]

I'm afraid I can't be very helpful with the company names since I'm in Kent, sorry. Don't get up north very much!

If you search for agency job listings you can sometimes get them to divulge the company names if you have a chat with them.

All I will say is just keep looking for electronics companies, write to them, call them, etc. Make sure your CV is good. The usual job search stuff, really.

First year of university is really not a lot to shout about, as I'm sure you already know, but you will likely find at least one company that will bite. Maybe even a few if you're going to work for free. Just focus on your abilities and don't bullshit more than necessary. 

Good luck!

[Neilm]

The only good thing about a soldering job is the possibility of being shown how to solder correctly. I was only briefly shown how to solder at university. Certainly they didn't bother mentioning different size tips, or why you want flux.

Helping a prototyping wire-man shortly after I started work showed me a lot about layout including several practical issues that have helped me over the years.

Neil

[MetraCollector]

You don't have job markets at your univeristy ?
Our Brno University of Technology launch this market annualy, I find my first job ever here, now it is 2 years. I work for ON Semiconductor. My first position was layout design (yeah, Cadence experience), now I work for test engineering, I programme Teradyne uFlex systems, do some maintenance on it and many activities linked to lab maintanence.
You should watch for noticeboards in school, I can see there many jobs everytime I see it in our school.

[Chet T16]

I don't have much to offer in the way of help but i can relate to your situation. I'm 32 and after making the decision to go to university a few years ago I started my first job (unpaid) working with electronics a month ago, its a placement as part of my masters.

The trouble i had when looking for somewhere to do my placement was that it was impossible to find out what companies were out there, nevermind actually applying for a job! In the end i found the company i'm with now by asking my family to keep and eye out and ask their friends. A friend of my brothers plays golf with someone who knows the company 

The thing that amused me when i went to see them was that the director of operations had a copy of my CV and he flicked passed my uni/education section and started talking about the projects and things i had listed under Electronics Interests.

[jpb]

The problem is that where the jobs are tend to be expensive to live so it is difficult when you start out. Electronics jobs tend to centre around the M4 corridor and places like Cambridge/Huntingdon.

The other catch 22 is that employers want people with experience and you need to get a job to get experience, for instance Picoscope were advertising that they are hiring:
http://pico.jobs/?source=HPju1
but they seem to be looking for experienced people.

Unfortunately in the UK a lot of bigger electronics companies have disappeared (GEC, Marconi, Ferranti, Plessey, Thorn EMI research, BT Research (still there but much diminished) - this is one of the reasons I moved to computer science from semiconductors.

One company that is still going and is up north, though east rather than west, is Filtronic. I just had a look and they are looking for an electronic design engineer but again want experience:
http://www.filtronic.co.uk/careers/pcb_electronic_engineer.asp

Otherwise it is a case of searching on the web for company names, finding out as much as possible about them and sending off speculative letters or e-mails with a short cv which makes the most of the experience you already have at the Pro Audio engineering firm.

Good Luck!

[AndyC_772]

I've been volunteering at a Pro Audio manufacturer whilst I do my degree. Nearly all of the Engineers have told me that you learn nothing really useful at uni and I should look for an entry level job.

That's a red flag, IMHO. It might be all very fashionable to say "it's not about having a degree, it's about enthusiasm, ability and experience", but it's BS which is mostly spread by people who don't actually have engineering degrees themselves.

That's not to say that you won't learn a great deal about how to be a professional engineer by working in industry for a while, but underestimating the value of a good engineering degree is always a big mistake. Experience will get you a long way, but bear in mind that experience is most useful when solving problems you've come across before.

Most engineers spend most of their time working on problems they've not come across before.

The only things I can find in my area are mundane soldering jobs.

How's your soldering? It might be quite good practice, so I wouldn't rule it out - but think of it as a practical skills 'boot camp' rather than a career step. Don't plan on staying beyond the point where it's useful to you, and be aware that it won't necessarily look that good on your CV either. Employers may, rightly or wrongly, judge your ability by the nature of jobs you've had before, so don't spend too long on a production line or that might be the only job you can ever get.

Is it worth my while contacting manufacturers and expressing my interest or should I wait until I finish my course?

You'll be more attractive to a potential employer once your studies are complete. An employer won't want to invest the time getting you up to speed on their products if they know you'll be back off to university after a few weeks. That's not to say you shouldn't try, but expect to have more success once you're available for full time work.

My advice to you would be to stick where you are just for the experience while you're during your degree, or maybe try and find somewhere different to build up other practical skills - but start looking a bit further afield when you've graduated. Take advantage of your prior background; apply to the companies who made the equipment you used in the forces, or other companies who operate in the same areas. You must have used radio or other comms gear, avionics, navigation, power supplies, computers... start by googling the names that were on that equipment and see who makes, sells, integrates, distributes or repairs it.

[hans]

Although I can't help you finding companies in the UK, I've been in a similar situation in the Netherlands. I live in the quite desolated north of the Netherlands, along farm lands, long distances from colleges and it's hard to find actual engineering work around here.

I have to say it's quite essential to get at least a Bachelor degree if you want to do any serious design work. Skills like soldering aren't teached in classes at college. If I wanted to get better at that I'd have to ask tutors in workshop and practice myself. I found practice material with my own projects, but unfortunately that doesn't pay money.
Sometimes the assumption is made you can just solder, and it's a hassle when you can't.
We all mess up sometimes, like bending pins on small LQFP packages on a prototype, ah well..
Usually prototypes tend to get rather ugly when rushed.

I've been lucky that I could be a student worker in holidays and saturdays at a company closely nearby where I had an internship. Before going to my final year in college I've continued my internship assignment in summer holidays making it finished to be actually used/sold. This was paid per hour.

What I've seen vocational education level tend to end up with production-like jobs. They assemble and test products.
No degree gets you soldering jobs. We have 16-17 year old students from secondary school doing such tasks on a saturday. They fabricate custom cables harnesses and solder simple through hole boards.
Some more experienced students (they are a bit older and are around for a couple of years) hand-place and reflow SMT boards..
All these jobs are guided with QA documents and lots of manuals.

I have to say, when I was in my 2nd year (before I went on internships) I did the same jobs and it was nicer to do than working in a supermarket. But it isn't something to write home about.

Saying you don't need a degree for design work is BS.

Internships are a nice way to apply at a company. Especially after your study, but sometimes also during your study. I've been lucky enough I could actually do design/programming jobs on a saturday, because it so happens a colleague (another firmware programmer) went back to college and worked part-time (3 days work, 3 days college). This way I could help out with some tasks like debugging bugs, writing&testing some library code and stuff like that. I considered it be a quite luxurious position.

The people in our production workshop are quite far away from the design work. They may improvise sometimes for a custom configuration but it's usually with consent of R&D.
R&D typically delivers manuals, QA documents and asks feedback on the products we build. We then investigate, debug and fix those issues.
Communication between the two is essential though, but in general R&D specify, design, debug and verify circuits, production assemble, test and install them.
Mileage may vary between companies and hierarchy. I don't know if this is standard, but this seems to be the way things are where I am.

[8086]

Saying you don't need a degree for design work is BS.

Would have to disagree with you there. It's useful but certainly not always true that you need to have a formal degree.

[hans]

There are always exceptions.

However, if I open any application for like Electrical Engineering, Firmware Engineer, Software Engineer, or everything alongside and in between, I read the requirement 'Bachelor or Masters degree' (or only masters, if the company really thinks they need qualified people).

I've neither seen  people without qualifications in those positions. Then again, I'm quite young, and I may not have seen everything this wonderful world has to offer yet.

[jpb]

My first proper job as a young engineer was with GEC research. There were a few people without degrees but these were either technicians or else they were older people that had been working there probably since the 1960s. Many of those doing the research (developing processing for the integrated circuits, designing the chips and so on) had PhDs as well as a first degree but it was a research labs rather than a commercial production facility.

In the UK now there are a lot of graduates who find it hard to get jobs so I guess it is even harder if you don't have a degree unless you have good experience, though I would have thought that degrees in electronic engineering are still sought after by employers.

I think the comment about learning nothing useful at university has a grain of truth if you mean by useful "directly applicable to the job". A university degree should give you an understanding of the principles that you need but you're unlikely to gain the direct experience of say the design process to the level needed on the job. For instance you might learn about simple amplifiers but you need to know this plus practical stuff about parasitic capacitance and how to lay things out and so on to be useful.

[nanofrog]

Would have to disagree with you there. It's useful but certainly not always true that you need to have a formal degree.

From a technical standpoint, I agree (design position).

Unfortunately, this is rare in practice these days from what I'm seeing, as most companies don't seem to want to take the chance on such an individual (risk averse mentality). Perhaps it's possible in a very small company (no formal HR dept., and the initial interview is the person they'd work directly under). But there could be issues with such a position, such as not being able to provide the mentoring (on the job training) the person needs when they hit a snag they're unable to deal with on their own. This is even an issue for degree holders (i.e. things not taught in a degree program), and poses a potential trap for recent entrants into the field IMHO.

[EEVblog]

The only things I can find in my area are mundane soldering jobs.

Forget production line soldering jobs, that's a job for unskilled workers, it very likely won't get you anywhere, or noticed within the company. The contract assemblers usually don't have anything decent related to actual design engineering, so forget it.
But being a lab gopher that solders and builds prototypes and stuff is good. Designers like to hand-off builds to someone else.
So that is a great role to try and get, as you are close to and work with the designers in the lab.
A good job is also troubleshooting/repair, you learn a lot by fixing stuff.

Drive/walk around your local industrial park and note down the names of any company that sounds engineering-like. Then research them and try to find someone senior in the eng department. Ask if they have a position for a lab gopher for a stuggling student with great soldering and build skills 

[EEVblog]

The only things I can find in my area are mundane soldering jobs. Is it worth my while contacting manufacturers and expressing my interest or should I wait until I finish my course?

Finish your course first. But if you need a part time job in the meantime, do as I said before.

[vvanders]

There are always exceptions.

However, if I open any application for like Electrical Engineering, Firmware Engineer, Software Engineer, or everything alongside and in between, I read the requirement 'Bachelor or Masters degree' (or only masters, if the company really thinks they need qualified people).

I've neither seen  people without qualifications in those positions. Then again, I'm quite young, and I may not have seen everything this wonderful world has to offer yet.

We exist, although it usually is pretty rare. Every job that I've applied to and been hired(Software Engineer) has had that requirement.

It can help getting in the door although once you have experience it matters less, it's also a lot more common in specialized areas of software.

[Rerouter]

though probably not as prominent in the uk, i got my foot in the door by chasing a trade rather than uni (short by 1 point on whatever they are calling the system now) originally i was applying for a sparky but as a quirk of chance, an automotive instrumentation place was willing to take me on,

over my apprenticeship i was able to see exactly where and how all the manufacturers screwed up in there designs, and learn from it (e.g. Holden should have researched the plastics in its commodores better, and Mitsubishi lancers got the strain relief points on a flex PCB wrong which actually created a single point of strain) and hundred of other small tidbits from each repair, plus it also end with me being qualified in instrumentation, which involves the designs of the pieces of wizardry dave picked up at that auction, mega ohm bridges and timebase counting are all explained here second year, ..

so if you cant find any luck in the design industry the repair one can sometimes teach you more,

[vk6zgo]

The only things I can find in my area are mundane soldering jobs.

Forget production line soldering jobs, that's a job for unskilled workers, it very likely won't get you anywhere, or noticed within the company. The contract assemblers usually don't have anything decent related to actual design engineering, so forget it.
But being a lab gopher that solders and builds prototypes and stuff is good. Designers like to hand-off builds to someone else.
So that is a great role to try and get, as you are close to and work with the designers in the lab.
A good job is also troubleshooting/repair, you learn a lot by fixing stuff.

Drive/walk around your local industrial park and note down the names of any company that sounds engineering-like. Then research them and try to find someone senior in the eng department. Ask if they have a position for a lab gopher for a stuggling student with great soldering and build skills 

Yeah,Soldering/Assembling is pretty much "the bottom of the food chain" when it comes to the Electronics industry.

As a Tech/Tech Officer with many years in jobs where I actually had to think,I was employed as a "Tech" at a small
manufacturer.
The work was 90% assembling,with no real tech work---they could have employed another Assembler & saved money.

The culture was pretty much "sit down & shut up!",with helpful suggestions from staff brushed off.
Getting noticed was not a good thing!

(If I sound "all bitter & twisted",it is because I am! )

If you are working at an old-established company you will probably learn correct industrial methods,but,if as in this case,it is a
fairly new company,they may well be doing a number of quite stupid things,which you really do not want to imitate.

I wouldn't give up on the "tearing down on the kitchen table",as usually you will learn the way practical equipment from reputable manufacturers is put together.

[IanB]

Nearly all of the Engineers have told me that you learn nothing really useful at uni

What you need to understand about this is not that uni is a waste of time (it certainly isn't), but that as an undergraduate, or indeed as a fresh graduate, you will be "green", a neophyte, with much still to learn. Your freshly minted degree won't instantly make you a productive engineer in the workplace. You will need to build up an amount of industrial work experience where you put your learning into practice before you will seem like a really valuable employee.

So in terms of part time or summer vacation jobs, follow the advice of others above and look for the kind of practical, hands-on jobs that you might be able to get in engineering companies that get you close to real engineers and allow you to watch what they do and learn from them.

When you graduate and are looking for your first real job that kind of experience will help you, particularly if you can talk about what you learned from it at interview.

Until then, use your time at university to learn as much as you can about anything and everything. You can never know what exactly you might or might not make use of in your first job, but the more you know the more prepared you will be for whatever problems you have to solve.

[Kernel]

I have an interview on Friday with General Electric's Healthcare sector for an Electronics Apprenticeship.
I searched the available positions on a well-known group training company's website, and saw that they actually had 1 available which pleased me very much as electronics job advertisements, particularly entry level, are pretty rare to come across.
So I applied, made a couple of follow up calls, got an 'interview' which actually just consisted of the lady talking about the company and what group training was all about, most of which I already knew, and just got the call back about half an hour ago, about ten minutes after I called her, to say that the company had just gotten back to her and I'm in for an interview at 2PM on Friday afternoon. Great!

[Stonent]

Start a hobby youtube channel and build stuff and talk about it.  It may not be job experience but it will be something you can show that is time and date stamped.

[free_electron]

You can get around the lack of experience issue by creating some of your own. Do some open source stuff and write it into your CV to sound more like a project you worked on, then turn up to the interview with schematics and PCBs in hand. In fact even better include the schematics in your cover letter, and maybe some screenshots of any SPICE sims you did etc.

just make sure the schematics are clean , and not your run off the mill internet tripe.. i won't even vomit on 99% of the internet schematics as it's a waste of good vomit..

[Electro Fan]

That would be brilliant. Thank you! I'm based in the North West. Liverpool and surrounding areas.

I'm off for the summer now so plenty of time to kill. I've been fixing and taking apart anything I can get my hands on but there's only so much you can do at your kitchen table.  The concepts we learn at uni are great but hands on, in a pro environment, is really where I'll earn my stripes.

I'm working on the bench, at my current place, just one day a week. Wiring up audio systems, point to point, PCB, rework and fault finding etc. Very basic stuff but I'm just happy to be in a workshop mixing with the guys and picking their brains. I don't get paid for it but that isn't an issue at the moment. Experience and becoming a better engineer is.

I've got all the usual good grades at A Level. Maths, Physics and ICT. I did a Level 3 in General Engineering at college and I'm going into my second year of a BEng Electronics degree in September.

I don't mind traveling (I have a car) and I'm a bit older than your average student at 33. I'm ex forces and have a background in logistics and aviation. Reliable, creative, hard working and able.

I appreciate any advice. Thanks again!

Scott

Hi Six,

You received a lot of advice here - how about giving us an update on your status and game plan?

EF

[BulletMagnet83]

Just to throw my two cents in here:

I started with my employer as a temporary, agency-sourced assembly line soldermonkey with no qualifications. After surviving several staff culls, and being one of the few and proud who turned up every day on time and sober (even after crashing my bike, I still made it to work), I kept pestering and hassling them to give me something more difficult/technical to do when a position came up.

Eventually it did, and after a technical assessment I was placed in the test department where my duties would include board-level tests, fault-finding and rework (which I am still not enormously good at, though better than when I started!), and most interestingly, servicing and repair of customer returned units with all associated paperwork, reports and office-wank... I'm still doing that now, and have been assisting in the R&D of new products as well, building my skills as I go. They're sending me back to college part-time to help fill in the blanks in my electronics knowledge, with talk of further promotion as my education and experience progress.

All of this is in spite of pretty much all other assembly operators telling me it was a dead-end position and I would never get off the "shop floor". Now I find and clean up after their fuck-ups  But I still work the lines on overtime because hey, why waste the training.

I still have a very long way to go until I'm a proper grown-up engineer, but sometimes companies do take a chance on employees and you CAN get a leg-up if you can prove your worth. It's just a very long-winded, uncertain way of going about it. If I'd known I was going to be living where I am and working for that company, I would have worked much harder when I was younger and got my damn diplomas when they were free!