Avoid Job Hopping
Avoid Job Hopping
(OP)
Hi all,
New to the forums, so forgive me if this has been discussed. I saw a few threads about this general topic, but still wanted to start my own.
I graduated May 2013 with my MS MechE degree. I've had two jobs since graduating: DoD-related position, which I left after ~9 months because I felt that there was too much Project Management involved and too little technical work. Next job, which I've been at for ~5 months, is involved in warehousing/robotics. Here too, I am finding that there is too much Project Management involved and too little technical work.
Both industries - DoD & Robotics I find to be interesting, but have been looking for more technical/research work as opposed to simply managing projects. I understand that new-hires will get stuck with mundane tasks, but looking at some of the more senior engineers, they certainly aren't doing more technical work either.
Being out of school for only a year, and getting ready to look for a new position, how do I avoid job hopping? I am confident that I can defend my position in seeking new opportunities, but don't want to fall into a third job that isn't challenging. I was significantly more prepared during the interviewing process for the position which I am currently in, and felt that I asked very specific questions relative to mechanical design. However, expectations from interview have not panned out and are not in the foreseeable future.
Advice from anybody who has been through this before?
New to the forums, so forgive me if this has been discussed. I saw a few threads about this general topic, but still wanted to start my own.
I graduated May 2013 with my MS MechE degree. I've had two jobs since graduating: DoD-related position, which I left after ~9 months because I felt that there was too much Project Management involved and too little technical work. Next job, which I've been at for ~5 months, is involved in warehousing/robotics. Here too, I am finding that there is too much Project Management involved and too little technical work.
Both industries - DoD & Robotics I find to be interesting, but have been looking for more technical/research work as opposed to simply managing projects. I understand that new-hires will get stuck with mundane tasks, but looking at some of the more senior engineers, they certainly aren't doing more technical work either.
Being out of school for only a year, and getting ready to look for a new position, how do I avoid job hopping? I am confident that I can defend my position in seeking new opportunities, but don't want to fall into a third job that isn't challenging. I was significantly more prepared during the interviewing process for the position which I am currently in, and felt that I asked very specific questions relative to mechanical design. However, expectations from interview have not panned out and are not in the foreseeable future.
Advice from anybody who has been through this before?





RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Perhaps what you consider project management is simply the usual work required and you have nothing to compare it to?
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
This is how this person reacted, he said : "what prevents you from measuring a temperature ?"
Temperature is here trivial. Meaning was : what prevents you - during your spare time for instance - to go on field or near some machine, pick up some equipment and take measurements to figure out how things work - to know about the process, about the order of magnitude of things like pressures, temperatures, etc.
This has changed my life forever.
Whatever is the position we are in, there are always plenty of ways to educate ourselves technically - like reading documentation, looking at a layout, reading a maintenance manual etc. It demonstrates nothing else than the attitude.
Landing a technical job is good but attitude is much more powerful. My opinion.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Rather than find another job can you talk to someone at your present company about your feelings?
If you can talk to your line manager maybe and tell him you would like more technical work he might explain why your doing project management.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Going the extra mile and then looking for more gets noticed. Spending time with your peers and asking them what their projects look like and learning from them gets noticed. So does sitting at your damn desk waiting for someone to bring you a research job.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Avoid Job Hopping
In general, I find it best to have a hands-on role in all of the various technical fields of a project before being handed a PM position. You can't properly manage what you don't understand, and learning 10 different fields at once while coming at it from the other direction is unnecessarily confusing.
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
- Steve
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
My current plan is to observe the job market - if something ideal pops up then I'll try to get an interview for it, but I certainly am not going to rush from one set of problems to another. I'll be working on adapting myself to my current role to make it fit my goals and ambitions.
My biggest concern: from what I've seen thus far when looking at job requisitions for mechanical design engineers is that they are typically looking for i-j years of design experience. While I'm gaining X years of experience, it's not in mechanical design engineering. So I'm not really progressing towards my goal expect by gaining a paycheck and learning about a different industry/role.
I'm definitely going to have to tackle some design related projects in my spare time to remain a credible candidate for future positions...
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
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RE: Avoid Job Hopping
“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
I kind of like the idea of temporary/contract-to-hire role. Will explore that.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
When there is a new distillation column or furnaces to be built somewhere, I try to get there.
Rather then doing small maintenance jobs without challenge.
You can put something like that in your resume?
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
People that are easily bored are seldom good hires. As I tell my kids, boredom shows a lack of creativity or initiative or both. If you have those virtues, put them to use where you are, and do it now, or you are unlikely to solve the root cause of your problem. While it's true that there are some jobs which are truly dead-end, you'll be surprised how few such jobs there really are.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Boredom is something different then self-development.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
I read through all the posts and there are some with very good advice. Your job is to help your company succeed. To make money. There are very few companies that require their Engineers to do nothing but "technical work". Engineers are paid to make decisions....period. Decisions that normally require technical knowledge and experience as well as commercial knowledge. Do not overlook the commercial side of the business. If you believe you can be successful in your career only focusing on technical, you are wrong. If they are paying you to be a project manager, then be the best project manager they have. Use any free time you have to study and understand the technical background and how things work....which will help you make better, more informed decisions on future projects.
So far you are 0 for 2 in finding "technical work". You may find you have better luck back at a University, but even then, the commercial side is always there because even Universities need to make money.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Europipe, my only point was that your way of living, which works great for you and no doubt earns you a lot more money and is way more fun than being a staff engineer somewhere, isn't really open to the OP who is only a few years from graduation. At some point you need to show your ability to commit or in a very real sense, many opportunities are going to be lost to you.
My two cents, but really worth no more than what the OP paid for them.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
love to support when a company needs me.
Don't like it when there is nothing to do and You have to sit and watch.
Saw poeple in misery when after 25 years they were fired, glad I'm flexible to switch.
Was asked by a company 3 times to return, and now they want me for the 4th time.
So maybe You don't want to interview people like me,
and I'm sure I don't want to work for people that have that shortsighted opinions.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
As time went by, I spent much more time with my employers. Will retire next year with 19+ years service with my current employer. I spent nearly 3 years with each employer except for one, which I left after 6 mos.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Is not a question of shortsightedness, it's simply statistics. For every one of you, there are dozens of "them." BTDT, given a choice of interviewing someone with 5 jobs in 10 yrs or someone with 2 jobs in 10 yrs, the latter wins, EVERY TIME, unless you're in an industry where the product cycle is less than 1 year. Otherwise, the job-hopper has zero experience in the other 5 years of my product's cycle.
TTFN

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RE: Avoid Job Hopping
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
I could not disagree more. This is not the 1950's where someone gets out of school and goes to work for the same company for their entire career. I was reading an article the other day, and if I recall correctly it said that the average time at one company today is three years. Look, I have been doing this for 20 years. In that time I have worked for six different employers. My last two companies have taken up 16 years of my career, and I stayed at my first job out of school for two years-do the math. While true, some hiring managers may have looked at my resume and said "job hopper" before filing it in the round file, hopping jobs-some I held for under a year, hasn't stopped me from being continuosly employed as an engineer since 1994. In fact, I advise young engineers to change jobs every few years when you are still young. How do you know what you REALLY want to be when you grow up if you don't try different things? In my first four years out of school I worked in two defense jobs at very large companies, I worked in an R&D lab in the auto industry, and also at a small privately owned aerospace company. The varied experiences of my youth provided a solid, broad-based foundation for what I do today. Also, changing jobs and industries when you are young will give you a flavor for different corporate cultures and different industries. A 1000 employee company where you are one of 300 engineers is different than a small company with few (or only one) engineers, is different than a 300 employee company with an engineering department of 50 people. Defense (and other highly regulated industries) are different than consumer products. When interviewing candidates, I don't hold it against someone if they had a few one year or less jobs when just starting out. Now if you have a 25 year resume absolutely filled with one year jobs then you might have a problem being labeled as a job hopper.
As far as the work you are doing being non-technical. I have some bad news for you: Most engineering jobs aren't very technical. I have spent a good part of my career doing R&D work and also a good part doing structural engineering. Even though the work by and large is mostly technical, there is still quite a bit of administrative work that is utterly boring. Sure you could follow the advice of others offered here and go that extra mile or do technical stuff in your personal time. I do encourage you to think outside the box, but ultimately you can either wait and hope for your current job to become what you want or you can go out and find a job that is more along the lines of what you want to do. I got where I am by going after the types of jobs that were more aligned with my interests, and quickly dumped those that weren't.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
Like others on here, I find hobbies at home when I have a "technical" itch.
Kevin Connolly, PE
www.TheEngineeringSurvivalGuide.com
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
the way to avoid job-hoping is... not change jobs.
Albeit I understand your position, and I am sure that if you changed jobs again you could eventually have a reason for each and every change you have to remember one very important point: For you to give a chance to explain yourself you have to land in an interview. and for taht the persons that is interviewing you has to go through your CV.
In my current and past jobs, I have/had responsibilities of choosing team members and I can say that if I see a CV of a recent graduate with 3 jobs in a year, this would go immediately to the bin, so no matter the reason you wouldn´t be given the opportunity to explain it. From my experience. I am sure that most of the decision makers think like this.
All the other advice that you received in this forum are important and you should follow it.
Best of lucks with your life and welcome to the engineering community.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
I moved around a lot when I first started it didn't really do me any good. Get at least 3 years under your belt. The if you move for for advancement, there should not be a problem as you will rely on your experience. JUmping around early may not give you the experieince you need. If you do decide to move, list the pros and cons and realise that you will ahve to stick it out. The job is actually waht you make it. YOu have to manage down, left and right and also up. You have to manage your boss so you get the opportunitites that you desire. Make it happen.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
1. Why do want to do "technical" work rather than be in a higher dollar/more fiscally responsible management position? Do you think engineering is number calc's or CAD designer 3d programing of robot arms, and not "getting robots to do what the customer wants them to do"?
2. What do you think "technical work" is? Why do you want to limit yourself to whatever you think "technical work" is?
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
I asked them of myself in my final year at university, when my house-mates were taking their engineering degrees into law and finance careers.
Then I asked it again after a few years in one job, where I was starting to get frustrated that my rôle was shifting from "doing interesting stuff" to "repeating the stuff that had been interesting" to "superivising new grads doing stuff that was once interesting to me" to "writing proposals for work that I might supervise if it came in".
So I jumped. No more project management. No empire-building. No Ferrari.
- Steve
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
1. Why do want to do "technical" work rather than be in a higher dollar/more fiscally responsible management position? Do you think engineering is number calc's or CAD designer 3d programing of robot arms, and not "getting robots to do what the customer wants them to do"?
"Technical" work is the fun part. Doing 3D CAD design, prototyping, calculations, etc, is what makes engineering fun. Those are the reasons I studied engineering in the first place, and the reasons I got an MS engineering degree as opposed to an MBA.
Managing the project where all of the true engineering work beyond conceptualization is outsourced? I don't consider this to be true engineering. Some of you may, but I'm just speaking in terms of my career aspirations. Sure, conceptualization of a new project is great, but the rest of the time your really just checking in to make sure the 3rd party is on schedule/meeting budget. I realize that everyone has a different definition of management.
2. What do you think "technical work" is? Why do you want to limit yourself to whatever you think "technical work" is?
Let me answer your question with a question of my own. Why do you consider that "limiting"?
Everyone leads a different career. Generally speaking, engineers follow a 'management track' or a 'technical expertise track'. Some people may flip flop tracks part-way through their career... but generally speaking, there are two primary ways in the corporate ladder. My preference is to follow the 'technical expertise track'. That's not for everybody, but that is my preference.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping
I agree with your 1. above, I've no real interest in anything but doing design and calculations in a career spanning 40+ years.
I would add from personnel experience that the best Project Managers I've worked with have usually come through the design/drawing office and generally those that haven't don't seem to have a clue.
To quote an example:- I was asked at short notice to go to site and act as a Mechanical Supervisor in putting some equipment together, I agreed but stated has I hadn't had anything to do with the project I would need sometime to look through the drawings and project reviews, I was gob smacked the PM said I couldn't because there were no hours left.
Until I pointed out that, "what would I do when asked a question by the client during a very tight shutdown schedule? tell the client I'll get back to him in an hour or so when I'm familiar with this aspect of the job", needless to say common sense eventually prevailed.
RE: Avoid Job Hopping