"Even Engineers and Science Grads Are Hurting"
Many FF readers think only those students with liberal arts degrees are struggling. However, even engineering and science graduates are struggling to find work.
With the release of new employment numbers on Friday March 4th, we at FrumForum decided that it was time to listen to the voices of the young as they face the challenges of this economic crisis. Over the next days, in an exclusive series, we will be featuring a number of their first-person stories in this space. If their experience is yours, we welcome you to join the conversation at Editor@FrumForum.com.
Click here for David Frum’s introduction to this series.
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I was lucky enough to graduate in August 2006 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from a private engineering college in Indiana. The experience was worth every student loan I had to take out to do it (at the time it was cheaper for me to attend a private school in Indiana as an out-of-state student than Penn State as an in-state resident). After being hired by an oilfield services company, I relocated to Anchorage, Alaska.
I worked as a field engineer on the rigs on the North Slope for three years. I also had the opportunity to travel extensively and work overseas on assignment. It was a great experience and I was able to pay off the $50k+ I owed in loans, putting me in a position I know many of my college friends envy.
The last months I was with the company were rather hectic and it was uncommon for any of the field engineers to work less than 85 hours a week with minimal time off. (Our job required that we work seven days a week, usually in a remote rig camp somewhere.) Like so many others, I suffered from burnout and after requesting a leave, I decided the oil industry was not what I was looking for.
Long story short, I quit my job. I put my stuff in storage and drove home to western Pennsylvania to spend the 2009 holidays with my family and travel with a college roommate (also an engineer) who had just been laid off. I worked at the Postal Service for the holidays for extra money and afterward took a trip to Europe.
Everything was fine until I returned - I had enough in savings to drive back to Anchorage and to live off of until I could find another job. Unfortunately I caught a bug while overseas (I suspect mono) and was laid up on my parents’ couch for the next two months. Because I was unemployed, I also had no health insurance. I wonder where my savings went. When I had enough energy to start moving around again, it was late in the summer and who wants to drive over the Rockies in the winter?
I have been searching for an engineering job ever since I quit my previous job, but because I'm trying to change industries my current skill set has not been applicable to many of the positions. It's cheaper and easier to mold someone right out of college than retrain a person with a few years experience apparently. Like Pablo, I get frustrated when I don't hear back from companies at all. How hard can it be to tell someone politely that they are not what you're looking for in an applicant? I realize that it was a bad time to resign from a job, but after suffering from burnout and mild depression it was certainly the best choice for me. What I didn't realize was how difficult it would be for a female engineer from a great college (ranked #1 in US News over the past decade for colleges offering a Master's program in engineering) to even get a call back. In the year I've been job hunting, I've only had one call back.
The point of my story is that even engineering and science people are having difficulties. Every permanent, full-time job has a hundred plus applicants it seems. Or, even worse, companies are only looking for a contract employee (i.e., no benefits, no insurance) with the exact skills they desire. If you don't fit what they are looking for precisely, you are just out of luck. That leaves people like me who are trying to start over out in the cold, getting by on warehouse temp jobs until they can save enough money to leave their parent's home.
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