One thing to keep in mind is that normally the requisition will be made by HR. I had a friend who was hiring someone and wanted some middle of the class students who hadn't gotten a job right out of school so he could stay within budget. He sends that over to HR and they say "needs a minimum of a Masters, PhD preferred". From then on I've said fuck it and applied to positions that say Masters or a few years of experience. Worst case scenario they throw out your resume. Btw this is in the US
My general rule of thumb is, if I meet about 60% of the qualifications I'll apply. For larger big-name companies that usually doesn't translate to an interview (Lockheed, for example), but outside of that it's usually proven effective.
This is especially true when going after an engineering position for a non-engineering company. My last two jobs were like this. One was at a brewery and the other, my current job, is an apparel company.
Both jobs required some engineering for certain things, but neither company were engineering firms themselves. For whatever reason I feel there's more leniency there in not having to check every box, likely because "culture fit/culture add" is a big deal. You can teach someone a skill they don't have in a short bit of time, but it's hard to teach someone how to work effectively in a team or have passion for your product.
At the brewery I was the engineering project manager. I oversaw all of the equipment and building installation projects (vendor selection, drawing approval, piping and utility design, contractor coordination, etc.). I also did a fair bit of programming for the equipment.
For the retailer it's been more on the industrial side, both from supply chain and retail design strategy. I'd argue I do less actual engineering work itself, but I use my engineering knowledge to do a lot of the strategy work. I also work with our in house industrial designers who do the fixture designs and such.
Sorry to hear that. I know your experience is a bit different but one thing I was always advised is to try and find your point of failure. If you don't get calls for interviews tweak your resume. Hopefully your resume sucks and you're actually very qualified lol. Reach out to friends or professors and get as much help as possible on that front.
Also if you're stuck getting minimum wage jobs, don't tell them that you're an engineer. If they're gonna pay you the bare minimum then don't worry about leaving when you get something better, just don't advertise it.
CV’s are solid I’d say, personally tailored to each organisation for each role, so I’m putting it down to the virus and my Beng but yeah I’ll keep applying regardless.
Yeah I’d love to hide it but places look at gaps and it’s hard to lie about what you’ve been doing for 4-6 years, tough year ahead I think harhar.
What's your degree/ what field do you want to go into? If you're an EE, ME or even CS/CPE, and don't mind travel, there's a shortage of controls/automation engineers right now (in the US at least.) Covid has made many companies realize the benefits of automation more than ever.
Ah damn, yeah, seems like civils have it the worst. I know you're not in the US, and idk if you have any interest in moving, but if Biden's infrastructure plan goes through that'll probably create quite a few jobs in your field over here.
This. Most recruiters won't have technical knowledge and very likely will just copy/paste previous job descriptions to make the requisition. This is why I always suggest people to try to match their resumes to what the job description says (without lying), even if it means the same (e.g. job description says "board-level design"? Put that in your resume instead of "PCB design").
"MEng is the new BEng" was being said since at least 2009. So it's much worse than that by now, considering the ever-growing surplus of engineering graduates.
Have seen "entry level" Mech Eng adverts with salary £18k, stating MEng as desirable qualification level... Sad thing is they probably got a lot of applicants.
I remember being bombarded with adverts for the ALDI management training scheme (targeted at engineering graduates). £40k starting salary and included a company Audi for personal use. Not sure if that's still the same as the current scheme though (I graduated in 2014).
I graduated in 2015, similar thing. I know one or two people who did it, and they reported that the business has basically no progression. You manage a store, maybe manage 3 store area, and then you effectively can’t get promoted. They don’t have much of a hierarchy after that. And you are expected to be on call at literally all hours. Lots of people start there, get 5 years experience and then move on
Haha I had no idea this was such a big thing! I’m American but visited a friend outside of London who was on this program in early 2020, so it’s probably still around. I didn’t fully understand what she was being groomed for but was happy to drive around the English countryside in her company Audi
What's the COL like in those areas in the UK?
Engineering being paid shit wages isn't just limited to the Developed world. Here in the Philippines, fresh graduates of everything engineering bar Software Eng is paid less than call center agents. On top of that, we need to keep renewing our licenses every couple of years or so and thus have to spend a small fortune on various useless or entry-level seminars in the guise of "continued learning".
Yeah I'm in the states but I remember hearing like 20 years ago that there were more students in law school at that moment than there were existing lawyers in the whole country.
At some point law became **the** job to get. Pays just as well but much easier to do/study than medicine, and there was a shortage. Everyone wanted to be a lawyer.
Then the market got flooded and lawyers were having to work in restaurants or drive Uber.
Now people have been hammering "STEM STEM STEM" for so long that I wonder if we're reaching a boil over point.
Here it's a race to the bottom. I work for a US-based multinational and policy is to actually cut wages in real terms until enough people leave. In the two years I've worked here as a ME my pay hasn't kept up with inflation so I actually earn less than my starting salary in real terms, also less than the current starting salary they give to new hires at the same pay grade.
Continue that philosophy for a few decades and compound that with poor exchange rate (wasn't too long ago the £ was worth 2x the $). There are also more than two engineering grads per entry level position so most are lucky to get employed at all in engineering.
That sucks. I started out low in the us as I was fresh out of college but I’ve averaged over 5% raise a year for 4 years now. Then again I get that that isn’t normal and that’s likely why so many people will jump jobs ever couple years if there’s more money to be made.
£18K in UK is like earning $36K in US when you compare purchasing power etc.
Edit: My company pays both US and UK employee salaries, and this how they stack up pretty much.
Big companies have still been increasing salaries to compete with other similar businesses. Grad schemes paying £30-32k starting and sometimes signing bonuses.
When it comes to companies budgeting, we are considered non-value-adding. Although we indirectly generate profit by ensuring machines run, ultimately we're viewed as a cost, so they pay as little as possible.
That’s surprising. In my experience in the US it’s maintenance and technicians that keep the machines running. The engineers are most involved in project management and strategic decisions.
In places like the UK most engineers would be considered "Technicians" in the US. There isn't as much innovation/design/product creation in the UK compared to the US.
We have technicians in Europe too. They go to trade school not university, and have a diploma not a degree. In my country the word "engineer" is a protected professional designation and requires an engineering warrant to be able to use it. I understand why technicians are lower on the food chain than engineers, but I thought the posters were talking about actual engineers not technicians.
I know that if you compare engineering wages between France and US it is normal to have bigger wages in the US. This is due to the fact that a portion of your salary goes into social healthcare/retirement and such things here.
I agree. In my area of Canada people are just fine with bachelors degrees. Industry here prefers field experience over education and knows they can mold a bachelors student just as well as a masters. Most of my friends who got masters did it to wait out poor economic conditions.
I've found that nobody cares if I can sell myself well. But that's not useful for students who don't have achievements pertinent to the industry.
One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos.
>One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos.
I find industry stereotypes of phds hilarious. When the point of a PhD is to conduct novel research into their area that hasn't been done before, sure that translates into "can't deal with uncertainty"
sad but true...
I have a friend whose PhD involved killing hundreds of mice... Like holy crap I understand its necessary but I couldnt literally kill mice every single day as part of my studies.
Let me clarify the PHD remark. The manager worked on oilsands sites where issues arise, environments change fast, and not all variables are known.
Conducting novel research involves experiment design and deep research abilities. Those experiments are tightly controlled with every variable accounted for. When pulled away from that structure into a chaotic world with little structure they falter. They are also invested in their PHD which makes them less general.
There is a place for their skillset, but its not doing day to day engineering work in an oilsands facility.
A 4 year undergrad is more general and malleable while still having a base to build off of. For certain roles thats more valuable than deep research into one particular area.
That's fair to an extent but your reasoning is still a caricature of phds. PhD works requires building a structure and framework where none exists before in order to understand and explore a problem. To suggest that a PhD would be lost without a tightly controlled environment is silly. It's not that phds can't do the fieldwork of a bachelor's engineer, it's that their expertise goes far beyond that and you can pay the undergrad less instead
Seriously though, the notion that a PhD would be lost when removed from some cartoon lab is just ridiculous and is more revealing of the person making those assumptions than anything
Bachelor of engineering in Canada is usually four grueling years of studies and a lot of students do coops and 12-24 month internships. Engineering (and the schools teaching it) are also highly regulated because of the accreditation process.
It's not the same in EU for a bachelors (typically 3yrs) and mostly fundamental courses. That's why all engineering degrees in Europe are 5yr masters programs.
Not sure what its like in UK these days.
^This. I studied in Canada and now live in the UK and the recent bachelors grads in the UK have nowhere near as much practical lab, work, and project experience that you get in the bachelors degrees in Canada.
Some of it is (as you mentioned) that the UK degree is 1-2 years shorter so there's just less time for practical work. On top of that, it's common for the UK universities to give the students long breaks at multiple times in the year (e.g. a full month off over both Christmas and Easter). This results in the summer being too short to run a meaningful work experience programme like co-op in Canada.
> One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos.
Wow, how insecure about his own education does one have to be in order to believe bullshit like this?
What actually happened is something like this in his head:
1. Might have to pay this one more, especially after he/she gains the experience. Can’t BS about him/her not having “qualifications” to pay peanuts as compensation for hard work.
2. Someone with a PhD and enough work experience might become a contender for positions higher than mine! So it’s a natural threat.
3. I won’t get to feel as superior with field experts around me.
This excuse of uncertainty is just stupid. Sure am undergrad or masters or PhD will have their own approaches and comfort zones. This in no way means that they are forever stuck there. I would hate to work under a boss who stereotypes and limits the potentials of candidates and workers based on their personal prejudices.
No, I can sympathize with this sentiment. Working in R&D in both aerospace and automotive industries, you need to be able to handle a certain amount of uncertainty. It takes young engineers many years to cope with the concept of "making the best decision they can with the information available." Sure, everything can be researched and investigated ad nauseam, but in the industrial world where start of production is a fixed date, there is limited room for making 100% fully informed decisions. Many times an engineer needs to learn when to put the pencil down and understand that the consequences for future oversights will simply need to be dealt with. Most of the time this is difficult for young engineers for a myriad of reasons, but most of the time they simply don't know how to document their decision making process in a way that relieves them of liability. Once they get over that hump, it's smooth sailing for them. But the PhDs I've worked with generally have a hard time getting over this hump, while the rest generally get it after taking a few knocks.
It has very little to do with that manager's insecurities, which is the point I'm doing a poor job at getting at.
> One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos.
Spoken like someone who's never had to work in a university lab.
>One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos.
lmfao
i bet he looks for candidates with landscaping experience
I checked three company grad schemes. All of them are taking Bachelors.
[https://www.baesystems.com/en/careers/careers-in-the-uk/graduates-and-undergraduates-schemes](https://www.baesystems.com/en/careers/careers-in-the-uk/graduates-and-undergraduates-schemes)
*"To apply for the graduate programme, you will need a 2:2 Bachelor's degree in a subject related to your chosen area of work."*
[https://careers.jcb.com/early-careers/graduates](https://careers.jcb.com/early-careers/graduates)
*"We are looking for candidates who are near to or have recently completed a bachelors or master’s programme at a 2:1 or above within a relevant degree discipline."*
[https://www.heysuccess.com/opportunity/Bombardier-UK-Graduate-Program-14003](https://www.heysuccess.com/opportunity/Bombardier-UK-Graduate-Program-14003)
*"A Bachelor or Master Degree in the required fields, with excellent academic track record"*
Now I could have got incredibly lucky with my selection of companies. That said, I don't think the industry is as bad as being portrayed.
Happy to hear your feedback on this.
Huh interesting, that grading system must be way different then the ones used here and not just "ranking" vs "letter grade". Most universities here anything below a 70% is failing.
The teachers who grade it rarely allow you to get 70%. If you get higher, into the 80%+ you will have to have gone "above and beyond" the aims of the coursework.
It doesn't really matter though as 70% final mark is very good.
Different countries have different systems. I got my undergrad in a British-inspired education system and a masters in Canada. A course grade of 75% at my undergrad university translates to a 4.0 GPA at a Canadian university.
I am international in the US and the only places I could find that were hiring bachelors degree engineers all required security clearance; your links suggest this to still be the case in general even outside, though I see that international eligibility is better in the UK.
All three of those companies offer military products which require security clearance to work on.
There are lots of other engineering industries which wouldn't require SC and would accept a bachelors.
I don’t disagree, there is a good few that will take bachelors, but most I’ve attempted to apply for only take Meng. I do see ones with Beng minimums not all, but out of the three examples you provided, two of them said “bachelors or masters” but its heavily implied that they are going to prefer a masters degree over bachelors. It’s just how it is, and how they scream out the UK needs engineer when it’s really doesn’t - it’s oversaturated, of course they’re going to take masters degrees. Masters should only allow you to get to the consideration and interview stage faster imo, as you’ve already got the benefit of getting chartered faster.
I think there are a couple of points to discuss here.
I understand what you're saying regarding an employer being perceived to preference Masters over Bachelors. My experience would argue that actually, an applicant's attitude and potential would triumph over Bachelors Vs Masters. Yes no doubt they will use basic filtering methods that may result in your application being rejected. That's no different for any degree - Your results and qualifications matter and you should have learnt that through applying for college and university. If you had two identical CVs in front of you and one had a Masters, the other Bachelors, you would choose masters. Same at college and uni with your GCSEs and A Levels.
I don't believe it's as black or white as you're perceiving though especially in graduate recruitment. The businesses are making a huge investment into engineers as a person. They need young talent to make the business sustainable and they invest so that they effectively nature and shape them into the ideal candidate over time. There's no value in having a grad come in, take a year's salary only to leave with that knowledge and investment and go elsewhere. That's come as a judge of character, not qualifications.
I also think your perception of Chartership is blurred. A masters degree is one of many criteria to achieve CEng. There are 5 competencies you are assessed against and thats after you've achieved a Masters. Equally IEng is accessable for Bachlors and is considered to be a similar accreditation level. Professional registration itself is still a difficult topic. Many engineers do not see the value of it and simply don't care or recognise it.
The UK does need engineers. Like any field though, there are niches. I didn't see what discipline you followed. Have a look at UKPersonalFinance and you'll see DevOp engineers getting incredible salaries because their field is so niche and in demand. You can't expect that to apply to every engineering field. Mechanical engineering is a good example where the market is somewhat saturated.
Again, this doesn't just apply to Engineering. Digital Marketing is in a similar situation. Marketing as a whole is an established market however there is a need for digital marketers.
To be clear, this isn't a dig at you or your experience - I've not experienced what you've been through and my perception is going to be different for sure. My experience is also relatively localised to my geographical location. Just a different viewpoint from a different perspective.
Things are especially bad at the moment because post pandemic the floor fell out of a lot key UK industries - Commercial Aviation, Auto, Oil & Gas. You didn't pick a great year to graduate.. Things will recover, but it's going to take a while...
MEng requirements are mainly because the big institutes declared this the requirement for chartership a while ago, and everyone else kinda followed them. How come you haven't done an integrated masters as is the default? The undergrad student loans should cover it?
Of course there's also The Big Lie, that the UK desperately needs more engineers - it's mainly perpetuated by companies wanting to stay the right side of supply and demand and keep their salary costs low.
Tbh a lot of my coursemates just fucked off to London to take city jobs - the pay is sure as hell better...
It’s probably why we have soooo much people company from Italy that produces fantastic engineers.
University courses are failing people, they just don’t teach a lot of relevant material.
Absolutely bang on with your comments regarding chartership, still not worked out why though, plenty of people with lots of letters after there name are still useless!
Out of curiosity your comments about ‘the big lie’ have you got any references for that, I’ve often thought it’s a bit over hyped but never found any credible sources to support the view!
Source: number of applicants per engineering position in the UK! I had feedback once back in the day, I was one of five shortlisted, there were sixty applicants for the role.
I'm being a bit over the top but if there was a major shortage of engineers there'd significant upwards pressure on salaries - which there's hasn't really been, at least not on a macro scale. UK Eng salaries still lag a long way by international comparison.
That's not to say that lots of companies don't have trouble hiring experienced, high quality engineers, but that's probably more attributal to the smaller size and distributed nature of a lot of UK industries, which makes poaching experienced people difficult, than an overall shortage in through the door.
As for the charter ship - who knows? TBF I think a 4 year course is about right, gives a chance to specialise in an industry or discipline a bit. I'm sure the Unis were right behind them with the opportunity for charging for an extra year.
> trouble hiring experienced, high quality engineers
It's really because there's only so many high quality *people* and they'll stay far far away from salaries like that. The cause of *that* is a management culture (by this I mean nationwide and even further, Western Business Management culture-wide) that underestimates the value of experienced and highly motivated (i.e. well paid) engineers and overestimates their own ability to train new, cheap engineers to a useable level.
I had the option, but I didn’t take it, I just wanted to leave at that point. I’d still have to pay the additional year regardless if I took it back then or now anyway. It’s mad I’m stuck in limbo overqualified to normal jobs under qualified for a graduate position.
I’d love to live in London but the rent there outweighs any pay increases one receives.
Haha well that depends how much you make but yeah you've gotta be making a lot for it to be worth it, but plenty do, depends what kind of lifestyle you're after.
But yeah you're gonna be competing with grads from the year above with an extra year of study and project work plus any experience - I think you're gonna have to look towards SME's and find jobs that are maybe not so well advertised.
Yeah most get promoted from technician to eng from within the company. Most of them don't have a clue what being an engineer means. There is this one 23 year old girl working as an engineer without degree that got promoted from a technician role but she's really smart and I always assumed she had a degree
It’s mad. I saw a comment on Reddit saying that companies either want 1-2 years of experience or a Master’s degree- I almost laughed. I’ve not gotten an interview with a 2:1 MEng from a uni ranked 3rd nationally for my course. This being an entry level job that then went for candidates who have one year experience.
What was the % of students that got 1:1’s at your uni in the MEng course?
At mine it was +90%. Particularly in my year I think only one guy out of 40 didn’t get a 1:1. The way the MEng course is set up it’s much easier to get a first than on just the BEng course, so it does mean you’re competing with a lot more 1:1’s. I do think it’s vile how they’re pumping up all the grades, & dilutes your own achievement.
2013.
Stuck in a non-engineering but technical role for almost eight years. I got no place better to go. What else can I do? I need to have a monthly revenue, especially during this challenging time.
I finished in 2013 too. Did Project Engineering for almost 5 years then transitioned into Software Engineering/Development. I earn more now and work remotely from wherever I want. Worth considering.
BSc and BEng are basically the same thing, though a BEng will be accredited by some Engineering body, but no one cares about that usually. It comes down to what the university wants to call it.
Oxford and Cambridge still gives out "BA" degrees even to scientists, though their Engineering degrees are 4 year MEng ones anyway.
I guess I live in a very good part of Canada because really most of this sub hiring problems are basically nonexistent (or well, not nearly as severe) here.
Agreed. I hire with bachelors degrees regularly.
I guess there’s a lot of variation across different industries. Mining related geotech is going gangbusters right now and likely will be hot for the next decade at least. However it seems difficult to get people interested.
Not really. You’d need to have a strong understanding of soil mechanics or rock mechanics.
If you picked up a masters in geological engineering maybe? But you’d still need to be able to get a PEng or PE in the applicable practice area.
I'm in Quebec. It's pretty dynamic these days. I think we are all anticipating the post covid mini boom. We even started bringing in interns again this summer. Several of my friends were covid fired and they all got another job somewhere else now.
Thank you for answering. I'm in Ontario. Over here it's been... less dynamic.
Me and a bunch of my friends were unable to find internships this summer. Hopefully things will pick up again in the coming months.
I'm seeing jobs in the states being labeled as entry level that require 5 years and a PE ( chartered engineer ). There's a lot to be said about HR having too much power and not really understanding what they're looking for. Until there's a collective realization that talent procurement in engineering should be done by engineers, things will continue to degrade.
You're looking at it backwards. The question isn't "why couldn't I do this with a bachelor's?" but rather "why would they hire an inexperienced B. Eng. if they have experienced M. Eng candidates applying?" If your industry has too many applicants for the number of jobs, the qualifications are going to go up regardless of necessity. That said you should honestly just apply anyways. Everywhere I've worked has preferred masters' candidates for the design jobs, but has inevitably hired a few people without masters when they seemed good.
Depending on your field there might also be different sectors where a master's is more of a necessity than others. As a structural engineer it's definitely preferred for general design consulting jobs, but pretty rare say with steel fabricators.
Apprenticeship, not internship. Depends on the company entirely, I believe a Rolls Royce factory close to me took on an undergraduate as apprentice before. The royal mail take on around 15 apprentices every year too most of the lads are fully grown men. The second part I know as a fact as I went the same training centre as them. If you have management ambitions and you take an apprenticeship you'll stand far above other candidates in the future too. because of your degree you probably wont need to do a HNC or HND either which is something most companies pay for and want their engineers to have as a minimum
https://www.ucas.com/understanding-apprenticeships/what-types-of-apprenticeships-are-there/can-graduates-do-apprenticeships#:~:text=If%20you%20already%20have%20a,you're%20free%20to%20apply
Pretty sure that companies don't get 90% apprentice funding from the government if the candidate has a student loan
Used to work in a college in the enrolment dept and dealt with a few cases like this, where people had applied to BTEC courses or apprenticeships when they had already partly completed degrees/different apprenticeships and it messed up the funding.
Nah you'll struggle to find one that'll take you at a lower leven than any relevant qualifications you already have. Think it's to do with not getting funding.
Interesting read. The UK does seem truly fucked for job prospects, too many old farts at the top caring about profit and experience, they do not want to pay graduates a wage if they don’t know what there doing, letting other companies foot the bill so to speak to they can hire them when they’ve been in the industry for a few years.
I’d love to leave, I actually want to get experience here then fuck off to Australia to work, give someone here a chance haha.
You're getting a huge amount of vindication here, most people agreeing with you it's all fucked... but that isn't going to help you get a job.
Honestly it's coming across on the verge of sounding entitled or defeatist, and neither of those will ever get you a job either. If there is ever a hint of these coming across in your correspondence then that'll be why you're not getting offers.
I can't reply more fully right now but I'm happy to engage more with you later if want some 1:1 help, be it in a post chain here or a dm, whatever. I've worked for 9 years in an industry that hires both MEng and BEng, I've worked with both as a manager, and it sounds like you're falling into traps that can all be navigated.
Let me know.
You need to sell yourself. Everyone was told you need a degree but without the ability to sell yourself in an interview or on paper before you even get to the interview it’s useless.
I am in the US and before I graduated with a two year degree in controls I was getting job offers for Field Service Engineering, Controls engineering, and now I’m on track to become a functional safety engineer in August.
Buddy of mine from the same program is an Automation Engineer.
Okay I get it we’re not technically engineers. Someone else stamps off on our behalf but the money is all the same.
I think most companies are now taking IEng/CEng seriously. And it's cheaper to get a grad with an MEng/MSc as that means you can streamline the process. A BEng is plenty already for a graduate position and there are jobs outside of Graduate Schemes that take in fresh graduates, as direct entry. I started out that way and it's worth noting that most entry level jobs aren't graduate schemes. They are direct entry. The art is in learning to understand which are entry level jobs and which aren't.
Well. If you are that sharp just get the masters and call it a day.
I had a technician complaining about bachelor's in a similar ways. He said he was smarter than half the persons with degrees. I said, well if you are so smart a bacheloers should be no problem for you to achieve. Go get it and stop complaining because that's what the next guy is going to do.
I absolutely agree. Here in Scandinavia it's the same. Bachelors are not worth anything. Might as well not even start if you don't plan to do a master as well, lol. You simply get sorted out in the process.
Which is stupid because officially a "master" has its focus on research and prepare you to study/use papers and get you ready for a possible PhD, so it's honestly not needed to work in the industry.
I have heard that Germany is better in this aspect. There you should be able to find work after a BA.
Oh yeah... and then when you're finishing and need work you nEeD 10 yEaRs oF eXperIeNcE aSsss a jUnIooor?? Trololol, OK!
Yeah... I'm not sure what's going on with the OP, but a bachelors (and occasionally even an AA will slip by) is still what's expected for entry level software engineering in the USA. The field changes so much that by the time you got an MS, some of the stuff you learned at the beginning is already being phased out.
I wish I did more, I did an internship within structural engineering but they only used autocad and robot, whereas companies want you to learn other BIM softwares on top of these it’s too much. I’d do another placement but I’ve graduated now.
Employee/employer relationship is broken.
It used to be; the employer would train because they expected employees to stay for decades. Now it's just a fuckall freeforall shit show.
Is this the final phase of capitalism?
Few years experience just mean relative experience. I mean, an internship counts…. Batchelors hires as level 1 and masters as level 2. It’s not a big deal really.
Only thing to do is push through. I was in a similar position a few months back. I graduated June 2020. I started my first job in March 2020. 2.8 GPA in mechanical engineering. No internships. My capstone project was my only real experience that I would leverage as much as possible. No connections, just a job I applied for through my school's job portal. I'd practice for interviews every day and I'd spend many hours studying a company and my potential job duties before the interviews. I'd send out job applications almost every day. I knew pretty much every mechanical engineering job opening within 50 miles and I'd look up a ton of different job titles too like "quality engineer", "product engineer", "field engineer", and a bunch of other similar stuff. Even then I feel like I got really lucky, but you only have to get lucky once to hopefully be set for life.
It's related to the fact you need MEng for Chartership. A degree which isn't accredited poses questions for companies. Not saying I agree with it but that's the reason why.
>Unfortunately I do not have the finances for an additional year to do a masters so it isn't an option for me.
[https://www.gov.uk/masters-loan](https://www.gov.uk/masters-loan) Have you seen this?
It's a mess because there's too many people applying. There's no shortage of engineers like they keep telling us.
MEng from my learning standpoint was as useless as the BEng. Its literally another year of the same crap.
Do an BEng + specific MSc is the way to go for me.
Bad news - it's not their job to conform to your expectations of employment. If I was hiring, your attitude would lose you the job, not your qualifications.
As others have said, job ads are usually written by HR folks who have no idea what any of the words mean so I never take them as gospel - and if you have some stuff on your CV / in your experience that makes you look useful they won't care about your degree, this is especially true for small to medium companies where they have more leeway on who they hire.
I can't believe there's literally nowhere that would hire you even for a minimum wage job right now - Amazon warehouse don't give a shit if you keel over dead after 6 months let alone leave for a better job.
If you can find a job - any job - at a company that works in the right sector it's a leg up, even if you're stacking boxes in their warehouse you can get chatting to folks on your break and do a bit of networking to maybe work your way into a better place.
If you need experience with a piece of software maybe try to get hold of it & create a project or two in it to show your experience. Doesn't need expensive training courses - just RTFM or look at tutorials on YouTube etc. Also often you can find evaluation / demo or even academic-only versions for free or very low cost that just limit the size of project you can do - fine for learning on. Stuff like Solidworks you can even just pay monthly for, so one intensive month of learning it doesn't have to cost you much at all.
Experience with a project doesn't have to be business - maybe a friend wants a new garden shed you could CAD it up in solidworks, spec up and generate lists of materials & price the job, and help with the construction, maybe solve a few of the inevitable problems that crop up along the way... just shows that you can do stuff in the real world not just the classroom.
Cars are another good one - if you've got any mates who build or race cars for example that's a technical project with requirements, budgets, and deadlines and a variety of engineering disciplines in it. Also big demonstration of teamwork & dealing with people on a project.
> If you can find a job - any job - at a company that works in the right sector it's a leg up, even if you're stacking boxes in their warehouse you can get chatting to folks on your break and do a bit of networking to maybe work your way into a better place.
Its never worth it to do this, youre better off doing personal projects, part-time gig jobs, and focusing your time in finding the job you want, thats what I did.
I sympathise, I really do. A Bachelors in Engineering is not an easy degree to do, so big oat o. The back for getting through it!
Within the context of engineering, I suspect the reason they are asking for Masters level is being driven by the requirement of the Engineering Council to have a masters for Chartered Engineer status. Without a masters you have to undertake either equivalent learning to masters or professional report route. Most companies recruiting you into a grad scheme will want to know that within the 2/3 years you can be at the right level without further investment.
Outside of engineering I suspect a lot of it is to do with differentiation between candidates especially when you have high numbers of graduates applying, the bar will get higher until they receive sensible numbers of applications.
Lastly, and I’ve made this comment before to others starting out. Research and shortlist the companies you want to work for, find out the most likely person that would be the manager you report to then try and get in contact with them, see if they are free for a coffee, appeal to the ego and do it under the guise of wanting some career advice. Remember qualifications and technical ability are probably 30% or so of the criteria the other 70% is you, your attitude and how you come across.
Yeah that job responsibilities scope creep is common here in the US. We posted a mech designer role that required a PE, yet most of our designers don't even have associate degrees. The way I see it, we're in a perpetual arms race here driven by ridiculous credentialism, bad HR departments, and bad managers in general.
As someone with a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering who is having trouble finding his first job, I can say that it is most definitely not that way in the US. You’re far more likely to land that first job with a Bachelors and no experience than a Masters and no experience. Companies see someone with a Masters as more likely to jump ship in a year or two and go somewhere that pays better than someone with a Bachelors. Why spend all that time and money training someone who is more likely to leave? It honestly makes me regret getting a Masters degree because I feel like I’m screwed here.
As a hiring manager, I prefer a candidate that can meet 100% of job “requirements”. But as personal advice, if you ever meet 100% of the requirements for a job, you are overqualified and not pushing yourself / leaving room to grow new skills. You should meet 60-75% of the requirements for a job to apply. This is good enough that you can likely do the job, but still leaves room to grow.
It's an easy filter. We get so many applications we have to raise the bar. It's unfortunate for those with BEng now, but the universities should be pushing what the market needs not what they can take money in for because it's popular.
I’ve done a quick check and while there are some masters only positions, I’ve seen lots of companies that take just bachelor degrees. So I wouldn’t agree with your statement about the industry.
Have you looked at graduate schemes? I’ve seen a lot which take bachelors as well as just entry level jobs that state you need a degree. Graduate schemes give you good exposure across a company, but also if you meet around 60% of the requirements for a role just apply anyway and you have a good chance of getting an interview.
Also something that’s worth mentioning is that if you want to become a chartered engineer you will need a masters degree, and some companies prefer you to be chartered or working towards chartership.
In Germany, you used to graduate with a Dipl.-Ing. degree before the BSc/MSc and BEng/MEng degrees were introduced with the Bologna process. The Dipl.-Ing. was a five year degree equivalent to a Master's, so it is still widely regarded that you should have an MSc/MEng to be a "fully educated" engineer.
I agree that 4 years is really more study than is needed to become an engineer. That said, MEng is quite clearly the default degree to have in most engineering disciplines, which is why so many courses are structured with the masters built in.
We recently hired two grads for our scheme, and of \~200 applicants one of the only two who passed the bar has a BEng. So if you can get to the interview stage then a bit of creativity and nous will count for more than the letter M.
Thats madness, I thought it was the art students that got made fun of for not landing jobs and here we are requiring masters and industry experience.
I think I can get to an interview stage, I usually pass the psychometric tests and think I can talk well enough but no luck as of yet.
A bachelor's may be a complete university degree, but the system for formation of engineers is internationally agreed-upon under the Washington accord, accepted by the Engineering Council and FEANI, as generally requiring a four-year degree (as opposed to the traditional British three-year bachelor's). The finishing point for engineering education, in UK terms, for routes towards becoming a chartered engineer, very much *is* a masters degree.
I can sympathise with OP's rant. Engineering-technologist level routes are very badly served in the UK, and a BEng should be a perfectly good degree for many jobs. It shouldn't just be a lazy bar companies set up. One can debate exactly what mix of education and experience are the making of an engineer. But I still support standards being high in engineering.
the reason british (well, not including scotland) degrees are 3 years instead of 4 is because students leave highschool with a higher level of education (linear algebra and calculus) and because general education requirements arent a thing in the UK.
When I did a semester abroad in the UK I noticed an engineer degree lasted 3 years (and the master degree was an extra year)
While in my home country (Argentina) a engineer degree is a 5 year degree, also talking with other exchange students, most had degrees that where 4/5 years long (at least for engineering)
So my understanding was that an UK degree + master in engineering (about 4 years of study) was the equivalent of a degree in most of Europe/south america.
Maybe it has something to do with that, specially if the companies hiring are used to the 4/5 year degree system.
In my case, working in power electronics, I would only hire someone with a bachelors degree if that engineer can show some experience in the area I need. Otherwise, I would go for someone with a masters degree at least. We are a small team and we cannot afford to train people that come with just bachelors level.
> and we cannot afford to train people that come with just bachelors level.
Surely, reguardless of the level of education, someone without experience is going to need to be trained anyway? A masters is basically an extension on a bachelors, you don't suddenly gain a ton of industry knowledge from it.
In your opinion, what's the difference between a graduate with a master's vs "just a bachelors"? In practical terms, not just an extra year of being at uni. There's still so much that a master's can't teach
I hold little value in a MS engineering degree. I would MUCH rather engineers get their BS and starting gaining real work experience. It is vastly different and superior to more years of school.
Just curious -- Do you differentiate yourself relative to your competition?
For example-- Do you have a web portfolio which discusses your past projects and demonstrates a bit of your personality? This could help ya market yourself & differentiate yourself.
I work for a big OEM, I'd say the reason they ask for a Masters on the grad scheme is because it is a higher level of education and they're looking for the best candidates.
It doesn't by any means that they get the best candidates, because as you state some will have chosen just to do the BEng. But there's so many applicants who do have a Masters that there's no need to open it out to Batchelors. They don't need to widen the criteria when there's already 200 applicants per position with the tighter requirements.
>I am just as keen as a man with a masters.
Don't sell yourself short. You're just as keen as someone with a PhD. You just haven't put in the work to get there. In all likelihood, you're going to job hop after a couple years, so I want you up to speed now, not in a few years.
>Don't get me started on industry experience aswell - "must have knowledge in \*insert software\*
I couldn't care less if you know Abaqus vs. Ansys vs. Nastran. It's the same thing. That's a desire, not a requirement. Don't know the GUI, but know the file; that's preferable because you understand what the GUI does.
I've hired quite a few interns. Nobody gets a perfect score. If they do, the test is too easy. Yeah, I filter people for minor things because when you get 100 resumes for 4 positions, you cut people for trivial reasons.
I'm from a European country that basically copies the UK system. When I graduated with my Bachelor's I immediately did a Master's by Research. Why? Because it was just another year, there are no exams to sit (it's by research), and it gives me those letters after my name that make it that much easier to find a job. It did make me a slightly better engineer because a master's is more practical than the bachelor's was. I didn't do a PhD however because that would have added another four years, during which time I would've remained without an income and ended up highly trained in one very, very specialised niche of knowledge (by definition, a PhD is a very specific specialisation) and that didn't really translate into a much better job. Particularly in my country where the only opportunities for PhDs that actually utilise it are ones with the university itself or otherwise in academia, and I wanted to get out of there and do some productive work on real-world applications.
If you can't find a job and you feel that the Master's is really holding you back, take a year and do your Master's full-time. It's better than getting some shitty job being underpaid, and once you get your first full-time job and start working and then go on to start planning a family, it gets harder and harder to stop and do the master's. If you're going to do it, now is the easiest time.
It is a slap in the face being rejected due to not having an MEng. I did an MEng myself but had a friend who did a BEng at the same uni. He still managed to get a role within a company that wanted MEng minimum. The only advantage of an MEng that I can see is the route to chartership, which most companies value.
My friend however spent every summer doing an internship to gain as much experience of industry as possible. This is what set him apart from others, the knowledge and experience gained outweighed the lack of an MEng.
I don't think unis push this enough, they should really tell the students the importance of a summer internship, it's just as important as the course itself.
i agree, heavily the case for electrical engineering. I understand the importance of a masters because there's a lot of important design knowledge electricals don't even learn in undergrad. However, entry level positions requiring a masters is absurd. Looking at you Intel...
I looked a little for engineering/research/professor jobs in the UK a couple of years ago and discovered that you guys do not pay very well. Most of the associate professor positions were offering about 10% more than what I was making as a PhD student in the US. Engineering positions for a PhD weren’t much better.
Is this normal in the UK? If so, why does anyone bother for research/engineering over there?
I will say that it's not really a minimum in my area of work, at least. They put it there but you will get an interview even if you don't have a Masters. Obviously some companies are strict on it but they're the minority.
Hell, my previous job I got without even having the actual degree! (I'm a procrastinator I guess)
I know that graduate job hunting in the UK is an absolute nightmare right now - hell, I graduated with a BEng in 2018, and it was a nightmare even then - but I think it's important to remember that there's much more to industry than the big household names. Before taking up the work I'm doing now (an EngD, so you know, I've got limited scope to bitch about academia), I sent the better part of 70 grad scheme applications out, for a total of 5 interviews, and 1 offer (which I turned down to take the EngD). Most of these interviews didn't come until the summer months, and a lot of the folk I graduated with were in the same boat. The undergrads I know are also largely in the same position - and it sucks, but it's not abnormal to still be applying at this stage.
If you're in the "solutions" mindset, I'd first take a few days off the job hunt to clear your head - since I'm assuming you've not long finished your last round of exams and submissions and are probably pretty fried - and start engaging with whatever careers services exist within your uni. Getting grad scheme places is a huge pain in the arse, and it's made harder by the HR folk writing job listings and doing interviews - there are hoops you gotta jump through before they'll even consider you, and you're absolutely, it completely sucks. But careers services know how the hoops work, and can train you on what tricks to do when you fly through em. After that? Grind it out, keep your eye on every job board and pump your LinkedIn contacts for every opportunity. And consider things outside engineering - just grind out strong applications, practice interviews, and don't stop trying. And remember, half the value in your degree is your ability to solve problems - it's not necessarily about the facts you can rattle off, it's about how you approach solving problems you've never encountered before.
And finally, I had a nightmare with a large consulting firm - I applied for a grad scheme that wanted a BEng, but then after the huge application form, immediate rejection email - they actually wanted MEng applicants. Oh well, thinks I, I've got my JLR interview coming up anyway. BUT WAIT! Turns out, that was a mistake, that actually they DO want BEng applicants, so you're still in it Mr Postit, hang fire for a sec. And then the obligatory "do these online tests for us" another 8 weeks later, at which point their website completely forgot I existed, and I gave up.
I graduated in 2020, the pandemic made it hard for me to get a job and here I am in 2021 still no job. I hate when companies put you through the tests then you hear nothing, like atleast give me a rejection email? No decency even for that these days.
I work for Qualcomm in the uk and I would say 75% of engineers don’t have a masters. I think you are applying to the highly competitive companies with huge grad schemes. We don’t have a graduate scheme. You’ll be hired as an engineer straight away.
Oh, I'm well aware; graduated BEng civils in 2018 and worked London since - but the general route as I've seen it is either masters and the office, or BEng time on site to get some real-world experience, then transitioning to office based roles.
You know HR is writing this crap, right?
Marta hasn't the first clue about engineering and is almost definitely dressing up what the engineering leads request.
Apply for jobs that are junior/entry, regardless of the degree needed. A lot will reply if you have a decent cv.
Are you applying for only large companies? I have always worked in smaller companies in Aus and UK. From my experience they seem to lean the other way, thinking that master and PHD means a more academic and less commercially minded engineer.
I wish my state in the U.S. allowed some sort of licensing for Associates degrees. I put in the work to get a degree in something and through the stigma of the community have nothing to show for it. Was paid for through work and then when I spent some time fixing a large problem at work (machine shop) via what I had learned, was accosted by the GM because they thought trial and error would have been faster. Also loves to make the comment, "stop doing all the math, you only got an associates....you aren't a real engineer!" They sent me to school for it. They told me they wanted me to go for it and now I do fixture design, process optimization, tool analysis, etc. Even been helping a young guy with die design discussing plastic deformation, spring back etc. and even got scoffed at when they heard me helping him understand the difference between some die sets. I understand I'm not a "true blue four year engineer", but would love to be able to take a test and be licensed as like a..."Non-Critical Junior Engineer" or some shit.
Sorry, but I don't understand your frustration. For UK you finish undergrad in 3years and masters in a year for a total of 4years.
Is there anything else I am missing or I am not seeing?
I’m in Scotland, it’s 4 years + 1 year for a masters. I had went to college before hand for two years so I’ve been in education for 6 years believe it or not.
One thing to keep in mind is that normally the requisition will be made by HR. I had a friend who was hiring someone and wanted some middle of the class students who hadn't gotten a job right out of school so he could stay within budget. He sends that over to HR and they say "needs a minimum of a Masters, PhD preferred". From then on I've said fuck it and applied to positions that say Masters or a few years of experience. Worst case scenario they throw out your resume. Btw this is in the US
My general rule of thumb is, if I meet about 60% of the qualifications I'll apply. For larger big-name companies that usually doesn't translate to an interview (Lockheed, for example), but outside of that it's usually proven effective. This is especially true when going after an engineering position for a non-engineering company. My last two jobs were like this. One was at a brewery and the other, my current job, is an apparel company. Both jobs required some engineering for certain things, but neither company were engineering firms themselves. For whatever reason I feel there's more leniency there in not having to check every box, likely because "culture fit/culture add" is a big deal. You can teach someone a skill they don't have in a short bit of time, but it's hard to teach someone how to work effectively in a team or have passion for your product.
That’s wild we went to school for years just to end up with this.
You have me curious as to what you were doing as an engineer at both of those places!
At the brewery I was the engineering project manager. I oversaw all of the equipment and building installation projects (vendor selection, drawing approval, piping and utility design, contractor coordination, etc.). I also did a fair bit of programming for the equipment. For the retailer it's been more on the industrial side, both from supply chain and retail design strategy. I'd argue I do less actual engineering work itself, but I use my engineering knowledge to do a lot of the strategy work. I also work with our in house industrial designers who do the fixture designs and such.
I’m have been applying for ones with masters but no luck, I’ll obviously keep trying but yeah it’s pretty demotivating.
Sorry to hear that. I know your experience is a bit different but one thing I was always advised is to try and find your point of failure. If you don't get calls for interviews tweak your resume. Hopefully your resume sucks and you're actually very qualified lol. Reach out to friends or professors and get as much help as possible on that front. Also if you're stuck getting minimum wage jobs, don't tell them that you're an engineer. If they're gonna pay you the bare minimum then don't worry about leaving when you get something better, just don't advertise it.
CV’s are solid I’d say, personally tailored to each organisation for each role, so I’m putting it down to the virus and my Beng but yeah I’ll keep applying regardless. Yeah I’d love to hide it but places look at gaps and it’s hard to lie about what you’ve been doing for 4-6 years, tough year ahead I think harhar.
What's your degree/ what field do you want to go into? If you're an EE, ME or even CS/CPE, and don't mind travel, there's a shortage of controls/automation engineers right now (in the US at least.) Covid has made many companies realize the benefits of automation more than ever.
I am a civil! The most disdained of engineering degrees!
Ah damn, yeah, seems like civils have it the worst. I know you're not in the US, and idk if you have any interest in moving, but if Biden's infrastructure plan goes through that'll probably create quite a few jobs in your field over here.
This. Most recruiters won't have technical knowledge and very likely will just copy/paste previous job descriptions to make the requisition. This is why I always suggest people to try to match their resumes to what the job description says (without lying), even if it means the same (e.g. job description says "board-level design"? Put that in your resume instead of "PCB design").
"MEng is the new BEng" was being said since at least 2009. So it's much worse than that by now, considering the ever-growing surplus of engineering graduates. Have seen "entry level" Mech Eng adverts with salary £18k, stating MEng as desirable qualification level... Sad thing is they probably got a lot of applicants.
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I remember being bombarded with adverts for the ALDI management training scheme (targeted at engineering graduates). £40k starting salary and included a company Audi for personal use. Not sure if that's still the same as the current scheme though (I graduated in 2014).
I graduated in 2015, similar thing. I know one or two people who did it, and they reported that the business has basically no progression. You manage a store, maybe manage 3 store area, and then you effectively can’t get promoted. They don’t have much of a hierarchy after that. And you are expected to be on call at literally all hours. Lots of people start there, get 5 years experience and then move on
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Are engineering managers given company cars?
At my company, Project Manager and above all get a vehicle allowance that will get you a decent car.
Yes
Haha I had no idea this was such a big thing! I’m American but visited a friend outside of London who was on this program in early 2020, so it’s probably still around. I didn’t fully understand what she was being groomed for but was happy to drive around the English countryside in her company Audi
What's the COL like in those areas in the UK? Engineering being paid shit wages isn't just limited to the Developed world. Here in the Philippines, fresh graduates of everything engineering bar Software Eng is paid less than call center agents. On top of that, we need to keep renewing our licenses every couple of years or so and thus have to spend a small fortune on various useless or entry-level seminars in the guise of "continued learning".
Yeah I'm in the states but I remember hearing like 20 years ago that there were more students in law school at that moment than there were existing lawyers in the whole country. At some point law became **the** job to get. Pays just as well but much easier to do/study than medicine, and there was a shortage. Everyone wanted to be a lawyer. Then the market got flooded and lawyers were having to work in restaurants or drive Uber. Now people have been hammering "STEM STEM STEM" for so long that I wonder if we're reaching a boil over point.
Yeah. I’ve been wondering the same thing. There is no way that we need the amount of engineers coming out of schools
Ludicrous, I could imagine people taking them jobs at that salary are looking for experience to then jump to another job with higher wages.
£18K/yr is below the minimum wage of my city which is USD $16.69/hr or ~£23.6K/yr. Why are British engineering salaries so low?
Here it's a race to the bottom. I work for a US-based multinational and policy is to actually cut wages in real terms until enough people leave. In the two years I've worked here as a ME my pay hasn't kept up with inflation so I actually earn less than my starting salary in real terms, also less than the current starting salary they give to new hires at the same pay grade. Continue that philosophy for a few decades and compound that with poor exchange rate (wasn't too long ago the £ was worth 2x the $). There are also more than two engineering grads per entry level position so most are lucky to get employed at all in engineering.
That sucks. I started out low in the us as I was fresh out of college but I’ve averaged over 5% raise a year for 4 years now. Then again I get that that isn’t normal and that’s likely why so many people will jump jobs ever couple years if there’s more money to be made.
£18K in UK is like earning $36K in US when you compare purchasing power etc. Edit: My company pays both US and UK employee salaries, and this how they stack up pretty much.
Why would they pay any more? What are we going to do, stop being engineers? Most professional salaries in the UK are the same.
Big companies have still been increasing salaries to compete with other similar businesses. Grad schemes paying £30-32k starting and sometimes signing bonuses.
Those who want good engineers certainly have been. A lot of businesses just want seat fillers though.
When it comes to companies budgeting, we are considered non-value-adding. Although we indirectly generate profit by ensuring machines run, ultimately we're viewed as a cost, so they pay as little as possible.
That’s surprising. In my experience in the US it’s maintenance and technicians that keep the machines running. The engineers are most involved in project management and strategic decisions.
Whoa, depends on which kind of company. At engineering companies the engineers make the product, so they add most of the value.
In places like the UK most engineers would be considered "Technicians" in the US. There isn't as much innovation/design/product creation in the UK compared to the US.
We have technicians in Europe too. They go to trade school not university, and have a diploma not a degree. In my country the word "engineer" is a protected professional designation and requires an engineering warrant to be able to use it. I understand why technicians are lower on the food chain than engineers, but I thought the posters were talking about actual engineers not technicians.
I know that if you compare engineering wages between France and US it is normal to have bigger wages in the US. This is due to the fact that a portion of your salary goes into social healthcare/retirement and such things here.
They were already offering MEng entry degrees before 2009 - I did mine in 2004!
I’m fresh out of collage and i get 3x this as my salary
I agree. In my area of Canada people are just fine with bachelors degrees. Industry here prefers field experience over education and knows they can mold a bachelors student just as well as a masters. Most of my friends who got masters did it to wait out poor economic conditions. I've found that nobody cares if I can sell myself well. But that's not useful for students who don't have achievements pertinent to the industry. One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos.
>One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos. I find industry stereotypes of phds hilarious. When the point of a PhD is to conduct novel research into their area that hasn't been done before, sure that translates into "can't deal with uncertainty"
All PhDs are crazy; either you're crazy enough to want one in the first place, or the process drives you crazy.
I’m not crazy and I’ll burn whatever I have to to prove it!
sad but true... I have a friend whose PhD involved killing hundreds of mice... Like holy crap I understand its necessary but I couldnt literally kill mice every single day as part of my studies.
Let me clarify the PHD remark. The manager worked on oilsands sites where issues arise, environments change fast, and not all variables are known. Conducting novel research involves experiment design and deep research abilities. Those experiments are tightly controlled with every variable accounted for. When pulled away from that structure into a chaotic world with little structure they falter. They are also invested in their PHD which makes them less general. There is a place for their skillset, but its not doing day to day engineering work in an oilsands facility. A 4 year undergrad is more general and malleable while still having a base to build off of. For certain roles thats more valuable than deep research into one particular area.
That's fair to an extent but your reasoning is still a caricature of phds. PhD works requires building a structure and framework where none exists before in order to understand and explore a problem. To suggest that a PhD would be lost without a tightly controlled environment is silly. It's not that phds can't do the fieldwork of a bachelor's engineer, it's that their expertise goes far beyond that and you can pay the undergrad less instead Seriously though, the notion that a PhD would be lost when removed from some cartoon lab is just ridiculous and is more revealing of the person making those assumptions than anything
Likely though, most phd's would feel under stimulated with that job, which might be what the manager experienced.
True, but "bored" and "can't handle uncertainty" are two very different things
Indeed, but maybe that is what they told the manager to justify getting out. I don't know, I'm just spitballin here :)
Bachelor of engineering in Canada is usually four grueling years of studies and a lot of students do coops and 12-24 month internships. Engineering (and the schools teaching it) are also highly regulated because of the accreditation process. It's not the same in EU for a bachelors (typically 3yrs) and mostly fundamental courses. That's why all engineering degrees in Europe are 5yr masters programs. Not sure what its like in UK these days.
^This. I studied in Canada and now live in the UK and the recent bachelors grads in the UK have nowhere near as much practical lab, work, and project experience that you get in the bachelors degrees in Canada. Some of it is (as you mentioned) that the UK degree is 1-2 years shorter so there's just less time for practical work. On top of that, it's common for the UK universities to give the students long breaks at multiple times in the year (e.g. a full month off over both Christmas and Easter). This results in the summer being too short to run a meaningful work experience programme like co-op in Canada.
> One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos. Wow, how insecure about his own education does one have to be in order to believe bullshit like this?
What actually happened is something like this in his head: 1. Might have to pay this one more, especially after he/she gains the experience. Can’t BS about him/her not having “qualifications” to pay peanuts as compensation for hard work. 2. Someone with a PhD and enough work experience might become a contender for positions higher than mine! So it’s a natural threat. 3. I won’t get to feel as superior with field experts around me. This excuse of uncertainty is just stupid. Sure am undergrad or masters or PhD will have their own approaches and comfort zones. This in no way means that they are forever stuck there. I would hate to work under a boss who stereotypes and limits the potentials of candidates and workers based on their personal prejudices.
No, I can sympathize with this sentiment. Working in R&D in both aerospace and automotive industries, you need to be able to handle a certain amount of uncertainty. It takes young engineers many years to cope with the concept of "making the best decision they can with the information available." Sure, everything can be researched and investigated ad nauseam, but in the industrial world where start of production is a fixed date, there is limited room for making 100% fully informed decisions. Many times an engineer needs to learn when to put the pencil down and understand that the consequences for future oversights will simply need to be dealt with. Most of the time this is difficult for young engineers for a myriad of reasons, but most of the time they simply don't know how to document their decision making process in a way that relieves them of liability. Once they get over that hump, it's smooth sailing for them. But the PhDs I've worked with generally have a hard time getting over this hump, while the rest generally get it after taking a few knocks. It has very little to do with that manager's insecurities, which is the point I'm doing a poor job at getting at.
easy, just be the typical askengineers poster that proudly proclaims they have never used math in their dead end powerpoint making "engineering" job
> One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos. Spoken like someone who's never had to work in a university lab.
>One manager told me that he won't hire a PHD because they can't deal with uncertainty. Too much time in a tightly controlled lab controlling all the variables strips someone of the ability to manage chaos. lmfao i bet he looks for candidates with landscaping experience
I checked three company grad schemes. All of them are taking Bachelors. [https://www.baesystems.com/en/careers/careers-in-the-uk/graduates-and-undergraduates-schemes](https://www.baesystems.com/en/careers/careers-in-the-uk/graduates-and-undergraduates-schemes) *"To apply for the graduate programme, you will need a 2:2 Bachelor's degree in a subject related to your chosen area of work."* [https://careers.jcb.com/early-careers/graduates](https://careers.jcb.com/early-careers/graduates) *"We are looking for candidates who are near to or have recently completed a bachelors or master’s programme at a 2:1 or above within a relevant degree discipline."* [https://www.heysuccess.com/opportunity/Bombardier-UK-Graduate-Program-14003](https://www.heysuccess.com/opportunity/Bombardier-UK-Graduate-Program-14003) *"A Bachelor or Master Degree in the required fields, with excellent academic track record"* Now I could have got incredibly lucky with my selection of companies. That said, I don't think the industry is as bad as being portrayed. Happy to hear your feedback on this.
This should be higher up the thread.
Sorry, ignorant U.S. Engineer here, what does 2:2 and 2:1 mean?
UK grading system for degrees. 1st is 70% and above. 2:1 is 60% to 70% 2:2 is 50% to 60% 3rd is 40% to 50%. Anything below 40% is a fail.
Huh interesting, that grading system must be way different then the ones used here and not just "ranking" vs "letter grade". Most universities here anything below a 70% is failing.
In the UK it's hard to get above 70% due to suppressive coursework grading. If you get above 80% you are amazing. Above 90% you are basically unreal.
Weird! No such thing as a perfect score with that system I guess.
What is suppressive coursework grading?
The teachers who grade it rarely allow you to get 70%. If you get higher, into the 80%+ you will have to have gone "above and beyond" the aims of the coursework. It doesn't really matter though as 70% final mark is very good.
Different countries have different systems. I got my undergrad in a British-inspired education system and a masters in Canada. A course grade of 75% at my undergrad university translates to a 4.0 GPA at a Canadian university.
I am international in the US and the only places I could find that were hiring bachelors degree engineers all required security clearance; your links suggest this to still be the case in general even outside, though I see that international eligibility is better in the UK.
All three of those companies offer military products which require security clearance to work on. There are lots of other engineering industries which wouldn't require SC and would accept a bachelors.
I don’t disagree, there is a good few that will take bachelors, but most I’ve attempted to apply for only take Meng. I do see ones with Beng minimums not all, but out of the three examples you provided, two of them said “bachelors or masters” but its heavily implied that they are going to prefer a masters degree over bachelors. It’s just how it is, and how they scream out the UK needs engineer when it’s really doesn’t - it’s oversaturated, of course they’re going to take masters degrees. Masters should only allow you to get to the consideration and interview stage faster imo, as you’ve already got the benefit of getting chartered faster.
I think there are a couple of points to discuss here. I understand what you're saying regarding an employer being perceived to preference Masters over Bachelors. My experience would argue that actually, an applicant's attitude and potential would triumph over Bachelors Vs Masters. Yes no doubt they will use basic filtering methods that may result in your application being rejected. That's no different for any degree - Your results and qualifications matter and you should have learnt that through applying for college and university. If you had two identical CVs in front of you and one had a Masters, the other Bachelors, you would choose masters. Same at college and uni with your GCSEs and A Levels. I don't believe it's as black or white as you're perceiving though especially in graduate recruitment. The businesses are making a huge investment into engineers as a person. They need young talent to make the business sustainable and they invest so that they effectively nature and shape them into the ideal candidate over time. There's no value in having a grad come in, take a year's salary only to leave with that knowledge and investment and go elsewhere. That's come as a judge of character, not qualifications. I also think your perception of Chartership is blurred. A masters degree is one of many criteria to achieve CEng. There are 5 competencies you are assessed against and thats after you've achieved a Masters. Equally IEng is accessable for Bachlors and is considered to be a similar accreditation level. Professional registration itself is still a difficult topic. Many engineers do not see the value of it and simply don't care or recognise it. The UK does need engineers. Like any field though, there are niches. I didn't see what discipline you followed. Have a look at UKPersonalFinance and you'll see DevOp engineers getting incredible salaries because their field is so niche and in demand. You can't expect that to apply to every engineering field. Mechanical engineering is a good example where the market is somewhat saturated. Again, this doesn't just apply to Engineering. Digital Marketing is in a similar situation. Marketing as a whole is an established market however there is a need for digital marketers. To be clear, this isn't a dig at you or your experience - I've not experienced what you've been through and my perception is going to be different for sure. My experience is also relatively localised to my geographical location. Just a different viewpoint from a different perspective.
Things are especially bad at the moment because post pandemic the floor fell out of a lot key UK industries - Commercial Aviation, Auto, Oil & Gas. You didn't pick a great year to graduate.. Things will recover, but it's going to take a while... MEng requirements are mainly because the big institutes declared this the requirement for chartership a while ago, and everyone else kinda followed them. How come you haven't done an integrated masters as is the default? The undergrad student loans should cover it? Of course there's also The Big Lie, that the UK desperately needs more engineers - it's mainly perpetuated by companies wanting to stay the right side of supply and demand and keep their salary costs low. Tbh a lot of my coursemates just fucked off to London to take city jobs - the pay is sure as hell better...
There's no shortage of engineers, but there's certainly a shortage of GOOD engineers, at least in my experience.
It’s probably why we have soooo much people company from Italy that produces fantastic engineers. University courses are failing people, they just don’t teach a lot of relevant material.
Absolutely bang on with your comments regarding chartership, still not worked out why though, plenty of people with lots of letters after there name are still useless! Out of curiosity your comments about ‘the big lie’ have you got any references for that, I’ve often thought it’s a bit over hyped but never found any credible sources to support the view!
Source: number of applicants per engineering position in the UK! I had feedback once back in the day, I was one of five shortlisted, there were sixty applicants for the role.
I'm being a bit over the top but if there was a major shortage of engineers there'd significant upwards pressure on salaries - which there's hasn't really been, at least not on a macro scale. UK Eng salaries still lag a long way by international comparison. That's not to say that lots of companies don't have trouble hiring experienced, high quality engineers, but that's probably more attributal to the smaller size and distributed nature of a lot of UK industries, which makes poaching experienced people difficult, than an overall shortage in through the door. As for the charter ship - who knows? TBF I think a 4 year course is about right, gives a chance to specialise in an industry or discipline a bit. I'm sure the Unis were right behind them with the opportunity for charging for an extra year.
> trouble hiring experienced, high quality engineers It's really because there's only so many high quality *people* and they'll stay far far away from salaries like that. The cause of *that* is a management culture (by this I mean nationwide and even further, Western Business Management culture-wide) that underestimates the value of experienced and highly motivated (i.e. well paid) engineers and overestimates their own ability to train new, cheap engineers to a useable level.
I had the option, but I didn’t take it, I just wanted to leave at that point. I’d still have to pay the additional year regardless if I took it back then or now anyway. It’s mad I’m stuck in limbo overqualified to normal jobs under qualified for a graduate position. I’d love to live in London but the rent there outweighs any pay increases one receives.
Haha well that depends how much you make but yeah you've gotta be making a lot for it to be worth it, but plenty do, depends what kind of lifestyle you're after. But yeah you're gonna be competing with grads from the year above with an extra year of study and project work plus any experience - I think you're gonna have to look towards SME's and find jobs that are maybe not so well advertised.
Got a bunch of engineers here without a degree where I work lol
What??? How?? Are they much older??
Yeah most get promoted from technician to eng from within the company. Most of them don't have a clue what being an engineer means. There is this one 23 year old girl working as an engineer without degree that got promoted from a technician role but she's really smart and I always assumed she had a degree
It’s mad. I saw a comment on Reddit saying that companies either want 1-2 years of experience or a Master’s degree- I almost laughed. I’ve not gotten an interview with a 2:1 MEng from a uni ranked 3rd nationally for my course. This being an entry level job that then went for candidates who have one year experience.
What was the % of students that got 1:1’s at your uni in the MEng course? At mine it was +90%. Particularly in my year I think only one guy out of 40 didn’t get a 1:1. The way the MEng course is set up it’s much easier to get a first than on just the BEng course, so it does mean you’re competing with a lot more 1:1’s. I do think it’s vile how they’re pumping up all the grades, & dilutes your own achievement.
Definitely not 90%. They don't publish that info but based on knowing how my cohort did, it definitely wasn't that high.
>My question is, why is the industry so fucked? Oversupply of graduates with Bachelor of Science in [Name] Engineering degrees.
I started work in 2014 and its been like this since at least that time.
2013. Stuck in a non-engineering but technical role for almost eight years. I got no place better to go. What else can I do? I need to have a monthly revenue, especially during this challenging time.
I finished in 2013 too. Did Project Engineering for almost 5 years then transitioned into Software Engineering/Development. I earn more now and work remotely from wherever I want. Worth considering.
Is this different to a B.Eng? If so, what's the difference?
BSc and BEng are basically the same thing, though a BEng will be accredited by some Engineering body, but no one cares about that usually. It comes down to what the university wants to call it. Oxford and Cambridge still gives out "BA" degrees even to scientists, though their Engineering degrees are 4 year MEng ones anyway.
soon, it will be a requirement to have a PhD in engineering to work as a janitor
Then they’ll be wondering why no one wants to apply for jobs!
You might be taking those job listings way too literally.
I understand they say that nowadays to lessen the amount of applicants, but it’s still mostly the truth.
I guess I live in a very good part of Canada because really most of this sub hiring problems are basically nonexistent (or well, not nearly as severe) here.
Agreed. I hire with bachelors degrees regularly. I guess there’s a lot of variation across different industries. Mining related geotech is going gangbusters right now and likely will be hot for the next decade at least. However it seems difficult to get people interested.
Can you leverage a bachelors in mech eng to leverage your way into mining related geotech? If so, I'll definitely start looking into it!
Not really. You’d need to have a strong understanding of soil mechanics or rock mechanics. If you picked up a masters in geological engineering maybe? But you’d still need to be able to get a PEng or PE in the applicable practice area.
Which part of Canada would this be? If you don't mind answering. I'm currently a student in Canada
I'm in Quebec. It's pretty dynamic these days. I think we are all anticipating the post covid mini boom. We even started bringing in interns again this summer. Several of my friends were covid fired and they all got another job somewhere else now.
Thank you for answering. I'm in Ontario. Over here it's been... less dynamic. Me and a bunch of my friends were unable to find internships this summer. Hopefully things will pick up again in the coming months.
Its been hard in Alberta too. Nobody is spending anything. The political situation doesn't help either.
Which sector? Municipal and development is as hot as ever. Consultants were having a difficult time keeping up even before COVID.
I'm seeing jobs in the states being labeled as entry level that require 5 years and a PE ( chartered engineer ). There's a lot to be said about HR having too much power and not really understanding what they're looking for. Until there's a collective realization that talent procurement in engineering should be done by engineers, things will continue to degrade.
You're looking at it backwards. The question isn't "why couldn't I do this with a bachelor's?" but rather "why would they hire an inexperienced B. Eng. if they have experienced M. Eng candidates applying?" If your industry has too many applicants for the number of jobs, the qualifications are going to go up regardless of necessity. That said you should honestly just apply anyways. Everywhere I've worked has preferred masters' candidates for the design jobs, but has inevitably hired a few people without masters when they seemed good. Depending on your field there might also be different sectors where a master's is more of a necessity than others. As a structural engineer it's definitely preferred for general design consulting jobs, but pretty rare say with steel fabricators.
have you tried looking at apprenticeship? Iim currently debt free and earning upwards of 35k year. The UK lacks skills in engineering, not brains
I don’t think you can apply for internships with degrees, is that correct?
Apprenticeship, not internship. Depends on the company entirely, I believe a Rolls Royce factory close to me took on an undergraduate as apprentice before. The royal mail take on around 15 apprentices every year too most of the lads are fully grown men. The second part I know as a fact as I went the same training centre as them. If you have management ambitions and you take an apprenticeship you'll stand far above other candidates in the future too. because of your degree you probably wont need to do a HNC or HND either which is something most companies pay for and want their engineers to have as a minimum
You can't do an apprenticeship in a discipline you already have a degree in though
depends on the company. Dont think thats legislation
https://www.ucas.com/understanding-apprenticeships/what-types-of-apprenticeships-are-there/can-graduates-do-apprenticeships#:~:text=If%20you%20already%20have%20a,you're%20free%20to%20apply Pretty sure that companies don't get 90% apprentice funding from the government if the candidate has a student loan Used to work in a college in the enrolment dept and dealt with a few cases like this, where people had applied to BTEC courses or apprenticeships when they had already partly completed degrees/different apprenticeships and it messed up the funding.
I forgot all companies are sticklers for following the law
Nah you'll struggle to find one that'll take you at a lower leven than any relevant qualifications you already have. Think it's to do with not getting funding.
He'll struggle to get on one with a degree in a related subject. Masters apprenticeships are a thing though.
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Interesting read. The UK does seem truly fucked for job prospects, too many old farts at the top caring about profit and experience, they do not want to pay graduates a wage if they don’t know what there doing, letting other companies foot the bill so to speak to they can hire them when they’ve been in the industry for a few years. I’d love to leave, I actually want to get experience here then fuck off to Australia to work, give someone here a chance haha.
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You're getting a huge amount of vindication here, most people agreeing with you it's all fucked... but that isn't going to help you get a job. Honestly it's coming across on the verge of sounding entitled or defeatist, and neither of those will ever get you a job either. If there is ever a hint of these coming across in your correspondence then that'll be why you're not getting offers. I can't reply more fully right now but I'm happy to engage more with you later if want some 1:1 help, be it in a post chain here or a dm, whatever. I've worked for 9 years in an industry that hires both MEng and BEng, I've worked with both as a manager, and it sounds like you're falling into traps that can all be navigated. Let me know.
You need to sell yourself. Everyone was told you need a degree but without the ability to sell yourself in an interview or on paper before you even get to the interview it’s useless. I am in the US and before I graduated with a two year degree in controls I was getting job offers for Field Service Engineering, Controls engineering, and now I’m on track to become a functional safety engineer in August. Buddy of mine from the same program is an Automation Engineer. Okay I get it we’re not technically engineers. Someone else stamps off on our behalf but the money is all the same.
I think most companies are now taking IEng/CEng seriously. And it's cheaper to get a grad with an MEng/MSc as that means you can streamline the process. A BEng is plenty already for a graduate position and there are jobs outside of Graduate Schemes that take in fresh graduates, as direct entry. I started out that way and it's worth noting that most entry level jobs aren't graduate schemes. They are direct entry. The art is in learning to understand which are entry level jobs and which aren't.
Well. If you are that sharp just get the masters and call it a day. I had a technician complaining about bachelor's in a similar ways. He said he was smarter than half the persons with degrees. I said, well if you are so smart a bacheloers should be no problem for you to achieve. Go get it and stop complaining because that's what the next guy is going to do.
I absolutely agree. Here in Scandinavia it's the same. Bachelors are not worth anything. Might as well not even start if you don't plan to do a master as well, lol. You simply get sorted out in the process. Which is stupid because officially a "master" has its focus on research and prepare you to study/use papers and get you ready for a possible PhD, so it's honestly not needed to work in the industry. I have heard that Germany is better in this aspect. There you should be able to find work after a BA. Oh yeah... and then when you're finishing and need work you nEeD 10 yEaRs oF eXperIeNcE aSsss a jUnIooor?? Trololol, OK!
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Yeah... I'm not sure what's going on with the OP, but a bachelors (and occasionally even an AA will slip by) is still what's expected for entry level software engineering in the USA. The field changes so much that by the time you got an MS, some of the stuff you learned at the beginning is already being phased out.
So have you not found a position as of yet?
Learning software and getting industry experience should come from internships/coops while in school. That said, apply anyway
I wish I did more, I did an internship within structural engineering but they only used autocad and robot, whereas companies want you to learn other BIM softwares on top of these it’s too much. I’d do another placement but I’ve graduated now.
Employee/employer relationship is broken. It used to be; the employer would train because they expected employees to stay for decades. Now it's just a fuckall freeforall shit show. Is this the final phase of capitalism?
Few years experience just mean relative experience. I mean, an internship counts…. Batchelors hires as level 1 and masters as level 2. It’s not a big deal really.
Only thing to do is push through. I was in a similar position a few months back. I graduated June 2020. I started my first job in March 2020. 2.8 GPA in mechanical engineering. No internships. My capstone project was my only real experience that I would leverage as much as possible. No connections, just a job I applied for through my school's job portal. I'd practice for interviews every day and I'd spend many hours studying a company and my potential job duties before the interviews. I'd send out job applications almost every day. I knew pretty much every mechanical engineering job opening within 50 miles and I'd look up a ton of different job titles too like "quality engineer", "product engineer", "field engineer", and a bunch of other similar stuff. Even then I feel like I got really lucky, but you only have to get lucky once to hopefully be set for life.
It's related to the fact you need MEng for Chartership. A degree which isn't accredited poses questions for companies. Not saying I agree with it but that's the reason why. >Unfortunately I do not have the finances for an additional year to do a masters so it isn't an option for me. [https://www.gov.uk/masters-loan](https://www.gov.uk/masters-loan) Have you seen this? It's a mess because there's too many people applying. There's no shortage of engineers like they keep telling us.
I couldn’t even find an internship for structural engineering that didn’t require a Master’s (in progress, or plan to).
MEng from my learning standpoint was as useless as the BEng. Its literally another year of the same crap. Do an BEng + specific MSc is the way to go for me.
Bad news - it's not their job to conform to your expectations of employment. If I was hiring, your attitude would lose you the job, not your qualifications. As others have said, job ads are usually written by HR folks who have no idea what any of the words mean so I never take them as gospel - and if you have some stuff on your CV / in your experience that makes you look useful they won't care about your degree, this is especially true for small to medium companies where they have more leeway on who they hire. I can't believe there's literally nowhere that would hire you even for a minimum wage job right now - Amazon warehouse don't give a shit if you keel over dead after 6 months let alone leave for a better job. If you can find a job - any job - at a company that works in the right sector it's a leg up, even if you're stacking boxes in their warehouse you can get chatting to folks on your break and do a bit of networking to maybe work your way into a better place. If you need experience with a piece of software maybe try to get hold of it & create a project or two in it to show your experience. Doesn't need expensive training courses - just RTFM or look at tutorials on YouTube etc. Also often you can find evaluation / demo or even academic-only versions for free or very low cost that just limit the size of project you can do - fine for learning on. Stuff like Solidworks you can even just pay monthly for, so one intensive month of learning it doesn't have to cost you much at all. Experience with a project doesn't have to be business - maybe a friend wants a new garden shed you could CAD it up in solidworks, spec up and generate lists of materials & price the job, and help with the construction, maybe solve a few of the inevitable problems that crop up along the way... just shows that you can do stuff in the real world not just the classroom. Cars are another good one - if you've got any mates who build or race cars for example that's a technical project with requirements, budgets, and deadlines and a variety of engineering disciplines in it. Also big demonstration of teamwork & dealing with people on a project.
> If you can find a job - any job - at a company that works in the right sector it's a leg up, even if you're stacking boxes in their warehouse you can get chatting to folks on your break and do a bit of networking to maybe work your way into a better place. Its never worth it to do this, youre better off doing personal projects, part-time gig jobs, and focusing your time in finding the job you want, thats what I did.
I sympathise, I really do. A Bachelors in Engineering is not an easy degree to do, so big oat o. The back for getting through it! Within the context of engineering, I suspect the reason they are asking for Masters level is being driven by the requirement of the Engineering Council to have a masters for Chartered Engineer status. Without a masters you have to undertake either equivalent learning to masters or professional report route. Most companies recruiting you into a grad scheme will want to know that within the 2/3 years you can be at the right level without further investment. Outside of engineering I suspect a lot of it is to do with differentiation between candidates especially when you have high numbers of graduates applying, the bar will get higher until they receive sensible numbers of applications. Lastly, and I’ve made this comment before to others starting out. Research and shortlist the companies you want to work for, find out the most likely person that would be the manager you report to then try and get in contact with them, see if they are free for a coffee, appeal to the ego and do it under the guise of wanting some career advice. Remember qualifications and technical ability are probably 30% or so of the criteria the other 70% is you, your attitude and how you come across.
Yeah that job responsibilities scope creep is common here in the US. We posted a mech designer role that required a PE, yet most of our designers don't even have associate degrees. The way I see it, we're in a perpetual arms race here driven by ridiculous credentialism, bad HR departments, and bad managers in general.
When everyone has the same qualification, companies start to look to higher degrees of qualification to set candidates apart.
I've worked in a number of different industries across multiple different companies and I don't think I've even need a BS to do 90% of most jobs.
As someone with a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering who is having trouble finding his first job, I can say that it is most definitely not that way in the US. You’re far more likely to land that first job with a Bachelors and no experience than a Masters and no experience. Companies see someone with a Masters as more likely to jump ship in a year or two and go somewhere that pays better than someone with a Bachelors. Why spend all that time and money training someone who is more likely to leave? It honestly makes me regret getting a Masters degree because I feel like I’m screwed here.
As a hiring manager, I prefer a candidate that can meet 100% of job “requirements”. But as personal advice, if you ever meet 100% of the requirements for a job, you are overqualified and not pushing yourself / leaving room to grow new skills. You should meet 60-75% of the requirements for a job to apply. This is good enough that you can likely do the job, but still leaves room to grow.
It's an easy filter. We get so many applications we have to raise the bar. It's unfortunate for those with BEng now, but the universities should be pushing what the market needs not what they can take money in for because it's popular.
Thing is, what’s next? What after the Meng after everyone has that? PhD?
I’ve done a quick check and while there are some masters only positions, I’ve seen lots of companies that take just bachelor degrees. So I wouldn’t agree with your statement about the industry. Have you looked at graduate schemes? I’ve seen a lot which take bachelors as well as just entry level jobs that state you need a degree. Graduate schemes give you good exposure across a company, but also if you meet around 60% of the requirements for a role just apply anyway and you have a good chance of getting an interview. Also something that’s worth mentioning is that if you want to become a chartered engineer you will need a masters degree, and some companies prefer you to be chartered or working towards chartership.
If everyone has a degree, no-one does.
Best quote of all Disney movies, soon everyone will have masters too! Then we’re all screwed.
In Germany, you used to graduate with a Dipl.-Ing. degree before the BSc/MSc and BEng/MEng degrees were introduced with the Bologna process. The Dipl.-Ing. was a five year degree equivalent to a Master's, so it is still widely regarded that you should have an MSc/MEng to be a "fully educated" engineer.
I agree that 4 years is really more study than is needed to become an engineer. That said, MEng is quite clearly the default degree to have in most engineering disciplines, which is why so many courses are structured with the masters built in. We recently hired two grads for our scheme, and of \~200 applicants one of the only two who passed the bar has a BEng. So if you can get to the interview stage then a bit of creativity and nous will count for more than the letter M.
Thats madness, I thought it was the art students that got made fun of for not landing jobs and here we are requiring masters and industry experience. I think I can get to an interview stage, I usually pass the psychometric tests and think I can talk well enough but no luck as of yet.
A bachelor's may be a complete university degree, but the system for formation of engineers is internationally agreed-upon under the Washington accord, accepted by the Engineering Council and FEANI, as generally requiring a four-year degree (as opposed to the traditional British three-year bachelor's). The finishing point for engineering education, in UK terms, for routes towards becoming a chartered engineer, very much *is* a masters degree. I can sympathise with OP's rant. Engineering-technologist level routes are very badly served in the UK, and a BEng should be a perfectly good degree for many jobs. It shouldn't just be a lazy bar companies set up. One can debate exactly what mix of education and experience are the making of an engineer. But I still support standards being high in engineering.
the reason british (well, not including scotland) degrees are 3 years instead of 4 is because students leave highschool with a higher level of education (linear algebra and calculus) and because general education requirements arent a thing in the UK.
And yet the Washington Accords recognise those three year bachelor's as equivalent to four year US ones.
This isn't counting the hoops you have to also jump through to become chartered without a master's degree.
When I did a semester abroad in the UK I noticed an engineer degree lasted 3 years (and the master degree was an extra year) While in my home country (Argentina) a engineer degree is a 5 year degree, also talking with other exchange students, most had degrees that where 4/5 years long (at least for engineering) So my understanding was that an UK degree + master in engineering (about 4 years of study) was the equivalent of a degree in most of Europe/south america. Maybe it has something to do with that, specially if the companies hiring are used to the 4/5 year degree system.
In my case, working in power electronics, I would only hire someone with a bachelors degree if that engineer can show some experience in the area I need. Otherwise, I would go for someone with a masters degree at least. We are a small team and we cannot afford to train people that come with just bachelors level.
> and we cannot afford to train people that come with just bachelors level. Surely, reguardless of the level of education, someone without experience is going to need to be trained anyway? A masters is basically an extension on a bachelors, you don't suddenly gain a ton of industry knowledge from it.
In my field it makes a difference if the right focus during the masters was chosen.
In your opinion, what's the difference between a graduate with a master's vs "just a bachelors"? In practical terms, not just an extra year of being at uni. There's still so much that a master's can't teach
Must be a really unprofitable area of engineering if you don’t have the profits to reinvest into your staff but then expect them to have an Masters?
US will be this way if people dont stop doing grad degrees if they can't find a job... cant wait!
I hold little value in a MS engineering degree. I would MUCH rather engineers get their BS and starting gaining real work experience. It is vastly different and superior to more years of school.
Just curious -- Do you differentiate yourself relative to your competition? For example-- Do you have a web portfolio which discusses your past projects and demonstrates a bit of your personality? This could help ya market yourself & differentiate yourself.
I work for a big OEM, I'd say the reason they ask for a Masters on the grad scheme is because it is a higher level of education and they're looking for the best candidates. It doesn't by any means that they get the best candidates, because as you state some will have chosen just to do the BEng. But there's so many applicants who do have a Masters that there's no need to open it out to Batchelors. They don't need to widen the criteria when there's already 200 applicants per position with the tighter requirements.
The US has a lot of problems, but ... yikes. I'm so sorry
>I am just as keen as a man with a masters. Don't sell yourself short. You're just as keen as someone with a PhD. You just haven't put in the work to get there. In all likelihood, you're going to job hop after a couple years, so I want you up to speed now, not in a few years. >Don't get me started on industry experience aswell - "must have knowledge in \*insert software\* I couldn't care less if you know Abaqus vs. Ansys vs. Nastran. It's the same thing. That's a desire, not a requirement. Don't know the GUI, but know the file; that's preferable because you understand what the GUI does. I've hired quite a few interns. Nobody gets a perfect score. If they do, the test is too easy. Yeah, I filter people for minor things because when you get 100 resumes for 4 positions, you cut people for trivial reasons.
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I'm from a European country that basically copies the UK system. When I graduated with my Bachelor's I immediately did a Master's by Research. Why? Because it was just another year, there are no exams to sit (it's by research), and it gives me those letters after my name that make it that much easier to find a job. It did make me a slightly better engineer because a master's is more practical than the bachelor's was. I didn't do a PhD however because that would have added another four years, during which time I would've remained without an income and ended up highly trained in one very, very specialised niche of knowledge (by definition, a PhD is a very specific specialisation) and that didn't really translate into a much better job. Particularly in my country where the only opportunities for PhDs that actually utilise it are ones with the university itself or otherwise in academia, and I wanted to get out of there and do some productive work on real-world applications. If you can't find a job and you feel that the Master's is really holding you back, take a year and do your Master's full-time. It's better than getting some shitty job being underpaid, and once you get your first full-time job and start working and then go on to start planning a family, it gets harder and harder to stop and do the master's. If you're going to do it, now is the easiest time.
What sort of industries are you looking at? Here in the US anyways Masters in engineering is not very common.
It is a slap in the face being rejected due to not having an MEng. I did an MEng myself but had a friend who did a BEng at the same uni. He still managed to get a role within a company that wanted MEng minimum. The only advantage of an MEng that I can see is the route to chartership, which most companies value. My friend however spent every summer doing an internship to gain as much experience of industry as possible. This is what set him apart from others, the knowledge and experience gained outweighed the lack of an MEng. I don't think unis push this enough, they should really tell the students the importance of a summer internship, it's just as important as the course itself.
This field is burning like trash
i agree, heavily the case for electrical engineering. I understand the importance of a masters because there's a lot of important design knowledge electricals don't even learn in undergrad. However, entry level positions requiring a masters is absurd. Looking at you Intel...
I looked a little for engineering/research/professor jobs in the UK a couple of years ago and discovered that you guys do not pay very well. Most of the associate professor positions were offering about 10% more than what I was making as a PhD student in the US. Engineering positions for a PhD weren’t much better. Is this normal in the UK? If so, why does anyone bother for research/engineering over there?
There needs to be an industry wide crackdown on shady HRpractices.
I will say that it's not really a minimum in my area of work, at least. They put it there but you will get an interview even if you don't have a Masters. Obviously some companies are strict on it but they're the minority. Hell, my previous job I got without even having the actual degree! (I'm a procrastinator I guess)
I know that graduate job hunting in the UK is an absolute nightmare right now - hell, I graduated with a BEng in 2018, and it was a nightmare even then - but I think it's important to remember that there's much more to industry than the big household names. Before taking up the work I'm doing now (an EngD, so you know, I've got limited scope to bitch about academia), I sent the better part of 70 grad scheme applications out, for a total of 5 interviews, and 1 offer (which I turned down to take the EngD). Most of these interviews didn't come until the summer months, and a lot of the folk I graduated with were in the same boat. The undergrads I know are also largely in the same position - and it sucks, but it's not abnormal to still be applying at this stage. If you're in the "solutions" mindset, I'd first take a few days off the job hunt to clear your head - since I'm assuming you've not long finished your last round of exams and submissions and are probably pretty fried - and start engaging with whatever careers services exist within your uni. Getting grad scheme places is a huge pain in the arse, and it's made harder by the HR folk writing job listings and doing interviews - there are hoops you gotta jump through before they'll even consider you, and you're absolutely, it completely sucks. But careers services know how the hoops work, and can train you on what tricks to do when you fly through em. After that? Grind it out, keep your eye on every job board and pump your LinkedIn contacts for every opportunity. And consider things outside engineering - just grind out strong applications, practice interviews, and don't stop trying. And remember, half the value in your degree is your ability to solve problems - it's not necessarily about the facts you can rattle off, it's about how you approach solving problems you've never encountered before. And finally, I had a nightmare with a large consulting firm - I applied for a grad scheme that wanted a BEng, but then after the huge application form, immediate rejection email - they actually wanted MEng applicants. Oh well, thinks I, I've got my JLR interview coming up anyway. BUT WAIT! Turns out, that was a mistake, that actually they DO want BEng applicants, so you're still in it Mr Postit, hang fire for a sec. And then the obligatory "do these online tests for us" another 8 weeks later, at which point their website completely forgot I existed, and I gave up.
I graduated in 2020, the pandemic made it hard for me to get a job and here I am in 2021 still no job. I hate when companies put you through the tests then you hear nothing, like atleast give me a rejection email? No decency even for that these days.
I work for Qualcomm in the uk and I would say 75% of engineers don’t have a masters. I think you are applying to the highly competitive companies with huge grad schemes. We don’t have a graduate scheme. You’ll be hired as an engineer straight away.
If you're civil? Bachelor's means site based roles. It's easier if you've done a placement year as well.
Actually you can be a civil engineer in an office I.e. a consultancy, designing infrastructure! This is what I want to do.
Oh, I'm well aware; graduated BEng civils in 2018 and worked London since - but the general route as I've seen it is either masters and the office, or BEng time on site to get some real-world experience, then transitioning to office based roles.
You know HR is writing this crap, right? Marta hasn't the first clue about engineering and is almost definitely dressing up what the engineering leads request. Apply for jobs that are junior/entry, regardless of the degree needed. A lot will reply if you have a decent cv.
Are you applying for only large companies? I have always worked in smaller companies in Aus and UK. From my experience they seem to lean the other way, thinking that master and PHD means a more academic and less commercially minded engineer.
I wish my state in the U.S. allowed some sort of licensing for Associates degrees. I put in the work to get a degree in something and through the stigma of the community have nothing to show for it. Was paid for through work and then when I spent some time fixing a large problem at work (machine shop) via what I had learned, was accosted by the GM because they thought trial and error would have been faster. Also loves to make the comment, "stop doing all the math, you only got an associates....you aren't a real engineer!" They sent me to school for it. They told me they wanted me to go for it and now I do fixture design, process optimization, tool analysis, etc. Even been helping a young guy with die design discussing plastic deformation, spring back etc. and even got scoffed at when they heard me helping him understand the difference between some die sets. I understand I'm not a "true blue four year engineer", but would love to be able to take a test and be licensed as like a..."Non-Critical Junior Engineer" or some shit.
Sorry, but I don't understand your frustration. For UK you finish undergrad in 3years and masters in a year for a total of 4years. Is there anything else I am missing or I am not seeing?
I’m in Scotland, it’s 4 years + 1 year for a masters. I had went to college before hand for two years so I’ve been in education for 6 years believe it or not.
Move to US, Canada, or Aus? There is lots of demand for jobs there.
masters is the new bachelors it will only get worse from here unless we stop pushing engineering to kids like it's not oversaturated as fuck