IME Canada is like the US in that engineering students are highly encouraged to participate in internships throughout most of their time in college to get the practical engineering (aka design & process) experience that colleges teach little/nothing of, which in reality is most of engineering. I have had interns that were in their first semester and others that were grad students, some working multiple years straight for the same employer. If you haven't spent a few years as an intern then you're well behind your peers and training to get caught up will be costly for your employer. Not sure if internships for graduates exist but I've never heard of one. If you're still local to your alma mater then I would recommend contacting their career office for guidance on your options.

With no experience, and looking for the first engineering job is always the challenge. As CWB1 mentioned, it would have been easier if someone advised you to be an intern while you were in college.

I would suggest going into contract engineering. If you have any CAD expertise, be a CAD designer. Contract engineering is not a permanent job. They only hire for a certain amount of time, most hire for a year or so. If you don't have any CAD experience, learn a CAD, like SolidWorks, CATIA, Siemens NX. Usually you can find a contract design job with one of these CAD systems.

When you get a few contract jobs under your belt, start applying for as a design engineer directly, or stay in contract. Once you get enough experience, you can just apply for direct.

Contract also means you move to different places for each job. I suggest keeping one place as a permanent residence and just rent an inexpensive place wherever your contract job puts you. By doing this, you can write off your expenses as a contractor.

Or, just continue to apply for a direct job.

Good luck in your search!!

CWB1 is spot on! Where I am, we use the internship as a way to get/select the best talent right out of university and mold them the way we work. If it doesn't work then after 3 months we start over. If we like him/her and it's mutual then we offer him/her a job.

Also the masters degree without experience may hurt more than help since you'll be expecting better pay for pretty much the same output at the start. Though for FEA it's a good thing to have. Here in the province of Quebec there are a lot of job posting so I guess you are in another province. The best places to look I think would be Design firms and get experience doing contract such as rc0213 suggested. I heard a lot of stories where the contractor gets offers from client when they feel the match is good.

Good luck!

Patrick

In my experience, software use varies from job to job and company to company. You could take a software training class, but unless you know how/where you'll use it then it might not be applicable (for example, my first job was doing pressure vessel FEA work but 90% of the training classes focused on 3D FEA and we used shell/plate models). As a fresh grad, my advice is to apply to any positions you find that are interesting and get some experience. You can always look elsewhere after you get some years under your belt.

There are MOOCs in simulation. Typically they give you an academic license to up to date software eg
https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:CornellX...

Now, I am not sure how much attention hiring managers pay to MOOCs, but it will at least give you the opportunity to work through a sensible course at your own pace.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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