Forgot how bad job searching was :(

Dave said:
What PhD did you apply for? I just graduated with MEng Chemical Engineering, almost went on to a PhD but decided against further study in the end - all the PhD's in the Chem Eng department were fully funded with a stipend of £16-20k/year!
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I didn't apply for any Phd but queried about them with relevant departments first. Thats when I found out that scholarships/studentships were very limited and that the competition was very tough for them. Also I had pass the deadline by that time.
The subject of interest was 'Turbo-Machinery' especially with regards to turbine/compressor. I wanted to do some research on the turbine/compressor as you may know they have very large applications in jet engine, industrial turbines, renewable energy sources(wind/water turbine). Also my final year project was also on water turbine which we had to design and build to a large scale with a lot of modifications with respect to smaller scale model.
But it was not to be. Also one of the uni professor rejected me on the grounds that I didn't cover CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics) enough. I pleaded with him to give me a chance as he had best turbo-machinery projects running.
The job market is just as worse where a fresh graduate is immediately
damned. Funny thing is when I talk to many people including my uni professors about overcoming experience barrier as an entry level candidate; they don't have any answer lol. So much for uni study. Also when my relatives ask me the same question as to what I have been doing I tell them my situation and they become silent aswell lol;). They think I am uni educated so I can get job very easily lol.
I think there needs to be major collaboration between government, unis and small/big employers about making it easy for graduates to obtain placements if thats the least they can do along with offering more entry level positions. The graduate schemes in my opinion are just farce which have very long application procedure and only few graduates get on those schemes.
By the way which Uni you graduated from that offered scholarships for all their Phd programs?


Edit: I could do Phd if I paid my own fees which was £3000 something per year which I couldn't pay. So I had to drop Phd idea.
 
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Dave said:
What PhD did you apply for? I just graduated with MEng Chemical Engineering, almost went on to a PhD but decided against further study in the end - all the PhD's in the Chem Eng department were fully funded with a stipend of £16-20k/year!
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That's cracking money. I've been on 15k average over 3.5 years on an industrial sponsored PhD and have been seriously worried about taking a pay cut after I finish because of not paying tax, NI or council tax. Could potentially have written up months ago if it wasn't so comfortable. Wish I could stretch it out for a couple more years.
 
To everyone - Put your CVs on Monster, Jobserve and Total jobs. At the moment I am getting a call about every 2 days from agencies, had one interview last week and got one on friday

There are loads of other sites too like jobs today which you can register for free on
 
Monster are rubbish tbh.

I stuck mine on there as a last resort about 6 months ago. No contact and all I get are adverts every few days to become a recruitment consultant or sales "executive"...

The 3 interviews I've had in the last year have all come from adverts on industry specific sites....
 
WingZero30 said:
By the way which Uni you graduated from that offered scholarships for all their Phd programs?

Edit: I could do Phd if I paid my own fees which was £3000 something per year which I couldn't pay. So I had to drop Phd idea.
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I graduated (or rather, will very soon!) from the University of Sheffield. Pretty much all of the PhD's in the Chemical Engineering department are industry-sponsored, which is why they generate a good stipend. The competition is huge for the places, but if you're a student from the University you've got the added bonus of being a 'known quantity'.

My housemate stayed on to do a PhD in Physics at Sheffield, his stipend is £16k tax free which is still an excellent amount of money given that it's free of taxes!
 
I guess it depends on the course and uni, most Geology PhD's appear to be sponsored as well, normally between 13 and 20k too.
 
I know how you feel, I got out of college and thought right ill start looking, I had looked for going on 6 to 7 months with nada until I finally got something, been stuck there for 4 months so far and i'm really wondering if it's worthit :(
 
Amp34 said:
Monster are rubbish tbh.

I stuck mine on there as a last resort about 6 months ago. No contact and all I get are adverts every few days to become a recruitment consultant or sales "executive"...
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Lol. The job emails from recruitment agencies are rubbish. I posted my CV on Bayt.com which claims to be no1 middle eastern recruitment website. I posted 2 years ago and haven't heard anything at all from them. They seem to have many jobs but all require 5+ years of experience.
 
They vary it seems.

I get about 5 or so reasonably regularly. I get one from manpower which is absolutely terrible as well. Industry specific ones are pretty good though. They actually have relevant jobs and even a few graduate ones coming through which is always good.

So yeah, ignore the big ones and head for the industry ones, unless of course you want something in recruitment, sales or IT then Monster et all are really good...
 
I'm signed up to a Catering Agency, having 4 years experience in Kitchens and they keep sending me emails about office work and manager positions for sales?
 
Its all about experience chaps. Try looking for internships etc if they are possible?

Recruitment agencies are laughable with the way they use search filters on all CV's and then spam emails out.

I get offers all the time for C++ developer roles in Manchester, just because I had the word C++ once on my CV and the word Manchester in there. In fact i'm a network eng in Reading, but 0/2 aint bad :)
 
pitaylor said:
Firstly I'll need your debit card details ;). In all seriousness what aero companies have you applied for and what companies have you had interviews with as I am also sick of assessment centres!.
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Although there are few big companies, I also applied to numerous small companies scattered throughout the UK. The problem I have found is that although small companies don't run graduate schemes as they don't have the resources to do all that planning; they are mainly on the manufacturing side of the engineering such as CNC machining/precision engineering which seems to be dominant part of small engineering companies business.
Whereas degree is supposed to prepare you for the design side of engineering which is likely to be a mismatch with small companies unless you have good experience in CAD programs such as AutoCad, Autodesk Inventor, Solid Works etc. Also small/medium sized companies represent almost 99% of the business as they fall in the category of SMEs.

These are the following companies I had interview/assessment centres with for different positions:

-'Serck Aviation' (Birmingham): One interview for the position of Junior Project Engineer Rejection

-'Compact Orbital Gears' (Rhayader, MidWales): One interview for the position of CAD Draughtsman Rejection

-'Rolls-Royce Plc' (Derby): Telephone interview for the position of Engineering Technician Rejection

-'Rolls-Royce Plc' (Derby): One interview for the position of Concession Coordinator Rejection

-'Rolls-Royce Plc' (East Kilbride,Scotland): Graduate Assessment Centre:Rejection

-'Rolls-Royce Plc' (Derby): Half day Graduate Assessment centre for the position of Controls Engineer Rejection

-'Agusta Westland' (Yeovil,Somerset): Graduate Assessment Centre Rejection

-'Costain Oil,Gas& Process' (Manchester): Graduate Assessment centre for the position of Piping/Stess Mechanical Engineer Rejection

-'Scope Charity' (London): One interview for the position of Assistant Manager Passed. Although this is subjective because the manager initially refused to take me on as I was already working as a volunteer in another Scope shop. It's only with the help of area manager I managed to secure the position.

So you can see I applied for mechanical engineering positions aswell as Aerospace is a branch of Mechanical Engineering encompassing 80-90% of Mechanical curriculum. I applied to Airbus aswell but my application form was rejected at the first stage.

I was discussing with my uncle about job hunting and we agreed that within the context of engineering there should be specialist technical colleges which only teach/train you on the courses which are in demand by the industry and upon completion you get placement with companies and progress thereafter.

Although in my experience engineering degree is the most practical degree, studying 3/4 years of indepth theory about boundary layer , flow separation, Mohr circle etc isn't going to be helpful with companies that require skills and experience in precision/CNC engineering; and thats where disparity between academic degree and industrial needs comes to light.

Edit: In 4 years since graduation I have applied to more than 200 engineering jobs!! and only managed to get 8 interviews lol. So you can seee how pathetic job market and job requirements are especially for an entry level candidate
 
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The job market is indeed a strange thing, I have not been looking but decided to update my cv and push it out to monster and the rest of them london jobs etc last month.

Being employed I don't really know why I did it but am glad I did, I have been recieving phone calls every few days offering interviews etc. Some of them are very respectable positions and I have to say decent money as well.

As a result I am now thinking about a possible move as have been offered a new position closer to home and with more money involved. I hope the op is having some luck now.
 
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