Electrical Engineering Student Looking For Ways to Improve Resume - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: MauriceT
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 17, 2020, 07:00:38 pm
content: Hello,I am going into my junior year of electrical and computer engineering with no internship experience related to my degree. I am becoming very worried about how I will fare against competition due to having no relevant work experience in electrical engineering. I was wondering if anybody here has any tips on how I could improve my chances of landing an internship next summer. I currently have several ideas, but just wanted outside opinions from people who may be more experienced than me. My current plan is to take online courses to improve technical knowledge or to start a personal project.If I hope on going into a career in hardware engineering, what online course topics would be most helpful? And also if there are any other suggestions for improving my resume and skills I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2020, 11:23:27 pm
content: Quote from: MauriceT on July 17, 2020, 07:00:38 pmCan you explain in more detail what you mean? If you have a degree you seem to be using the term "junior" in a very specific way that won't mean a lot to most of us.

author: Weston
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 12:36:07 am
content: Do an EE related project and document it somewhere online (github, hackaday.io, hackster, flicker, etc.). Preferably something that requires you to design your own PCB. It does not need to be that contrived, but possible examples are a small tesla coil, some sort of LED / nixie tube clock, robot arm, audio amplifier.For the majority of every EE interview I ever had for internships they asked me about my projects, I even have a section on my resume highlighting some and linking to github and some photo albums on flickr. Independent projects are a great way to demonstrate competency

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 12:43:29 am
content: Doesn't your university have a program to help you find an internship? I'd have thought they would have resources to help you put together a resume as well.Starting out is often a classic chicken & egg problem where you need experience and connections to get a job but you need a job to get experience and connections.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 01:17:07 am
content: You don't need ways to improve resume. You need hands on experience.Do EE related projects you can do by yourself.It doesn't have to be anything glorious, or groundbreaking, or perfect, or even finished. Just that they have to be made by yourself. Upload a few photos of each project, write some explanations, document the projects, keep some activity logs with weekly progress for bigger projects. Show a few key stages, not just the final object like it will be a commercial.Make a blog page or create an account on some makers platform, and upload your work. Choose a free platform, like wordpress.com, or instructable.com, or hackaday.com, or anything alike. If you already have projects posted in forums or other online places, link to them. If you tinkered before but never published, make some pics, add some description, and upload what you worked.In most of the places, projects alone will weight more than diploma, will put you in front of other competitors, will give you experience, and will teach you a lot of things that can not be learned other than by doing them.Good luck!

author: 0culus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 02:39:38 am
content: Quote from: coppice on July 17, 2020, 11:23:27 pmIn US higher ed this usually means the third academic year of a bachelor's degree. Definitely want to be in a summer internship by this time.To the OP: what are your interests in the field? As others have said, you should be doing projects. But these should be aligned with your interests otherwise you won't have much motivation.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 02:45:34 am
content: Quote from: MauriceT on July 17, 2020, 07:00:38 pmSimple, get experience.Engineering is a vocational industry, that means you have to show what stuff you have done.Sodo stuff.That can be designing your own products, helping out with other projects like open source projects. Or can be as a simple as building stuff that you can take along to an interview.Easiest way is to take an existing open source project and then modify it some way and build it and make it look jazzy.What stuff are you interested in? Best to do that.Don't forget to document stuff and publish it. On a blog or Youtube video.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 02:49:21 am
content: I have old videos on job interview tips:

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 02:51:52 am
content: Woah, that last video is way out of sync, Youtube must have screwed it up.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 03:36:57 am
content: From 11min onwards:

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 05:14:27 am
content: Here you go, just for you!

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2020, 01:42:18 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 18, 2020, 05:14:27 amMost employers care a lot about your degree, as you won't get past the barriers set up by the HR department without that degree. Your experience means little to people in HR. They just don't understand it. One of the great things about internships and other things that build personal relationships between you and actual engineers is they can often bypass the HR barrier. That said, few other types of course count for much. You take them to gain a skill, not a qualification. Once you get past the HR barrier, and have your CV in the hands of someone you might work for, the things you have done count a lot. Not only because they are an indication of your character and abilities in the lead up to getting an interview, but because if you don't much on that list, you just won't have much of interest to talk about in an interview.If you have not been able to get an internship, open source projects are probably a good substitute these days. Most of these projects are either entirely software or mostly software, but that's also true of what most electronics graduates do these days. There are open source projects in areas like SDR that are far more electronic engineering than software, but the work you do requires no hardware to be constructed, no test instruments, and only a modest amount of ready made hardware to be bought.

author: yashrk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2020, 06:16:18 pm
content: This year I completed my 3 years as an EE "professional" and I started getting similar questions from my college juniors, so I wrote following blog post on things I did to get placed in a good job.In India there are truck loads of engineers passing each year yet companies have open positions which they are unable to fill due to lack of good engineers (I have shared few articles in the blog which are talking about this if you want to know more). There has been this disconnect between the industry and engineering education that most of the recent graduates of these engineering colleges are not employable. Though we can't change the education systems on our own we can do few things to stand out.https://www.yashkudale.com/electronics/how-i-landed-my-first-engineering-job/In the post I talk about1. Working on Personals Projects2. Find out what you like to work on3. Network with like-minded people4. Get paid to learn5. Improve your communication skillsThese are certainly heavily inspired from Dave's past videos but the blog post gives real life examples of how I implemented these things and I have provided tips and links for each of the above mentioned things. Have a look and hope it helps you.And Dave if you are reading this thank you for educating me about "Screw You Money" it has been a life saver during this pandemic. Thanks a lot!!