Maintaining Job Skills While Being Unemployed (apply, qualify, holiday, work)
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My question that I would like to put out there is how someone goes about maintaining current job skills or even building new ones during an extensive bout of unemployment. If companies are going to steer away from people who have been unemployed for long periods of time because they think the person's skills are not up to par, there must be somethings people can do to counter this. For myself, I have a four-year degree in mechanical engineering. I went through a program which has been accredited by ABET, an organization that is valued by many employers. Even so, citing the skills that employers are asking for, I feel my school did not adequately prepare me for the real job market. Many job ads are requiring solid modeling software experience sometimes a specific package that may or may not have been taught in my program. Sometimes they require a skill or knowledge of something that was not standard in my program and one would not have learned it unless they took the proper elective course(s). When you are unemployed, it is not very feasible to take classes to learn these skills if you cannot afford to pay the money. Even if, I could afford to take a solid modeling classes, that would not be good enough since employers want on the job experience as well. As a result, I feel myself in a position where I may never again return to the field of engineering and realize the benefits of my investment in a college education. So far, I don't know what else to do but to make plans to change careers into another field. I really hate to leave engineering, but unfortunately it has not been a very rewarding field for me and if it can't pay the bills, then I must look elsewhere.
I am sorry for your situation. It is hard to go to school and waste four years just to find yourself unable to fit somewhere. I am in the same boat in the sense I wasted my money in a four year degree I can not use. I think is always a good idea to have a plan "B". I hope you find something you enjoy and that pays the bills. They say that Health care is one of the hot things now. I wish I could become a nurse but it is expensive and it will take me a minimum of two years. As an irony, I've just wasted one year sitting at home so if I had started a year ago, I'd just had a year to go for nurse assistant.
Right now we are living in a Catch22 type of environment. So many people without jobs have fallen behind with their bills and as added insult to the injury, they get rejected because they have bad credit. If you want to change careers, is difficult because there is always the experience thing. I guess the easiest way to switch is going back to school and have them place you out of career services, but then you will also have to pay for the school somehow. The only positive is that as our incomes have gotten lower because of the unemployment, we now qualify for grants and loans, if you want to check on that.
Hey Meng2 - what Mech Eng school did you graduate from? How many Mech Eng jobs have you had?
I graduated from the Univ of IL at Urbana Champaign and I also felt that this school did not teach me enough to be a successful product design engineer. I had to self train myself or go to community colleges to learn 3d modeling like Pro Engineer and Solidworks, + GD&T, and sheet metal. Gotta teach myself Tolerance Stackups and more Plastic Product design.
Get uTorrent for downloading torrents. Then use picktorrent.com to get the Pro Engineer Wildfire and Solidworks torrents for downloads.
I maintain and get new skills while unemployed by practicing on the software I got.
Hey Meng2 - I just replied to you to help you out a little and I am a 5.75 year experienced Mechanical Engineer but you're such a DEADBEAT POSTER that you don't reply to my response.
I couldn't afford to pay my initial college but my Parents paid for it and I'm stuck being a Mechanical Engineer or else I would have no career except McDonald's. So I slugged it out to get where I am and I have a better Mechanical Engineering career than my brother's friend who got a Master's + the best Mech Eng thesis award [he ended up doing Cisco Networks].
Meng2 - if you can't get your career off the ground you might just suffer poverty. Since you have no money for further education you have to make best use of your degree. Try even being a low level drafter first and work your way up to a Mech Eng.
If you don't reply to my responses I should have never replied to your thread.
Don't do what Jesse said regarding torrenting. It's called stealing and is against the law. Buy the software if you can afford it, otherwise go to Barnes N Noble and read books on your career.
Don't do what Jesse said regarding torrenting. It's called stealing and is against the law. Buy the software if you can afford it, otherwise go to Barnes N Noble and read books on your career.
It's getting the software and using it responsibly without abusing it... For example - how can you learn Solidworks without having a copy of the software to practice and learn on? Solidworks is very strict on granting it's Student Edition software ONLY to students... no unemployed professional can legally buy a copy of Solidworks unless they fork out the $10,000 or so it costs to get the software with FEA. With no good and affordable means to get the software you're only way to get it is through software pirates or torrenting. You can't learn this skill through just reading a book.
It a numerous fact that working sometimes successful engineers somehow get their own copy of the software to learn on. They do this for Proe, Solidworks, Autocad, Inventor, etc... It's very rare or maybe impossible to get a job without having any 3d CAD skills, and companies will rarely train you [but I saw companies give white guys a break].
Now if you got a bootleg copy of the software and ran a company using that, that would be abusing it. But getting a bootleg copy of the software just to self train on it - that's not so bad and it sometimes can help "Solidworks" bottom line when you recommend their software.
for the potential employers that you're looking to apply to, can you ask if there are internships/co-ops available that you can do in the interim to better your skills? i know it's easier said than done, but that might be able to get you in the door (similar to how the temp to perm process works). i've seen this happen before with one of my friends who was unemployed and wanted to sharpen their skills. they were able to land an internship with a company that actually paid and he was offered a job after his internship was done.
Hey Meng2 - I just replied to you to help you out a little and I am a 5.75 year experienced Mechanical Engineer but you're such a DEADBEAT POSTER that you don't reply to my response.
lol @ crying because someone didn't immediately answer your post, on a holiday weekend no less. Maybe he has this thing called a "life." Try it sometime, in between bouts of stealing software that is.
lol @ crying because someone didn't immediately answer your post, on a holiday weekend no less. Maybe he has this thing called a "life." Try it sometime, in between bouts of stealing software that is.
Good ol' Jesse, he's trying his hand at "networking" and "making friends in the industry".
Stealing software is illegal and if on a company computer puts the employer at substantial financial risk even if they don't know about it. Don't do it.
Things will turn around they always do. In 1980 the job market dove into the toilet and didn't come out until four years later at which rate we have two more years.
If you think mechanical engineers have it bad try being a budding architect.
Hey Meng2 - I just replied to you to help you out a little and I am a 5.75 year experienced Mechanical Engineer but you're such a DEADBEAT POSTER that you don't reply to my response.
I couldn't afford to pay my initial college but my Parents paid for it and I'm stuck being a Mechanical Engineer or else I would have no career except McDonald's. So I slugged it out to get where I am and I have a better Mechanical Engineering career than my brother's friend who got a Master's + the best Mech Eng thesis award [he ended up doing Cisco Networks].
Meng2 - if you can't get your career off the ground you might just suffer poverty. Since you have no money for further education you have to make best use of your degree. Try even being a low level drafter first and work your way up to a Mech Eng.
If you don't reply to my responses I should have never replied to your thread.
While I appreciate the input, I do not log on to this board every day and therefore had no way of seeing the replies to my original post. I have had to take it upon myself to learn things on my own as I am able to. College engineering programs are always changing and therefore I recognize importance of continually learning to keep up with the newer graduates entering the workforce.
My goal is like you mentioned, to start at a lower level and work up as I increase my knowledge.
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