Job Hunting and Internship Dilemma

This is middle of my third year. I was supposed to finish my third year by now. But I was at work in last fall and thus continuing my last term of third year right now. From coming September I will start my well-anticipated 1-year long co-op or internship. As I am also a student adviser for the Electrical Engineers in my university, I am trying to write something based on my own experience, which may help my fellow students in their career.

I applied to couple of jobs today and was asked a lot of questions by my friends who are also in the same boat. Most common ones are concerning which jobs I am applying, and why, and what if this and that. Very common and reasonable questions. But the funny thing is apparently there is a lot more jobs available than the total number of students applying-then what is to worry? Actually. that is the scariest part. Tell you why. As there is more job, it is obvious that you are going to get a job. Now the question is WHERE? Unfortunately Ottawa has research centers from a lot of big companies. A lot of options. So we have to build up some kind of really unethical “ethics” in our mind. I have seen people to show a lot of weird reasons for not applying to any particular company – from serious comments like “they have contract with military; I don’t want to work with something which is going to be the reason for the death of innocents” to silly ones “i don’t want to work there, cause they are growing so fast that they had to shut down their cafeteria to accommodate more people.” Well, for me, right now I don’t mind to work for any company as long they have the type of jobs I am looking for. (may be the truth is there is not a lot of electrical engineering field related jobs ).

Sounds like we (carleton students) live in a fairy land. Not really! Getting an internship position and a full time position is not same; even though in a lot of jobs there is not too much difference in terms of the type of work. When some one is going to work as a full-time employee, there are a lot of other issues related. How good team player you are, where you exactly fit in the company, there is high pay scale and plus benefits. So company cares more about where they are investing money.

A lot of my friends complain their employers don’t care about what they do. Well, this is already weird enough. But this is true. If your employer or manager doesn’t care about your work, you will start feeling not-so-important in the company itself; which will impact your performance. Very logical. I think getting attention is human being’s one of the primitive nature. Using this fact, you can take advantage in a lot of cases. The success behind social networking websites or youtube lies into this small fact.

This is very important to determine what you want to do in future. Based on that you can start preparing yourself. Software or web related fields have plenty of jobs to offer in the Ottawa-Kanata region. Even though you are studying in some other major, you should consider the local interest to get job. I have seen people to ask questions like “I am studying business, why should I be interested in technology?” No one ever have written any where that business has conflict with technology or biology with technology. In one way or another almost all major programs are related to each other. You can build up a business software like SAP with adequate knowledge on the expected fields or sell business products to your technical customers as you already have basic knowledge on technology.

For now, I will stop. I think I will write more technical articles later. Some of them will be targeted to only Carleton’s students. But I will write a lot of other articles as well. Until then, cheers every one!