Job search frustration...

[gtg947h]

...or, when did IT become engineering?

We have come to realize it is time for us to leave the Savannah area, as things have become untenable for various reasons. Our target is "back home" in the same area as our parents and most of our siblings. But jobs in my field at my level aren't that common in the area, so barring an approval to go full remote (sort of a Hail Mary but my boss thinks I have a decent shot at approval; maybe the horse will learn to sing) I need to find a new job.

So I've been searching...

Apparently sometime in the last few years, most IT roles gained a job title as some sort of engineering position. Now, I really don't mean to throw shade on anyone doing these jobs or on the skillset and education required to do them. But dangit, they're confounding my search results! And they're cluttering them up with dozens of IT-type jobs I'm not even remotely qualified for, and causing recruiters to come after me thinking that I do that sort of work because the words "systems" and "engineer" both appear in my resume. I search known employers in my field and out of fifty results, maybe one or two are anywhere close to what I do (and they're probably entry-level vs. senior).

We had that title claimed already, couldn't they pick a different one?

Also I find it very frustrating that job titles just do not translate well, posted salary ranges are meaningless, etc... and yes, end of an election year is not good job search time. But, I have time on my side...

[jemhouston]

The last time I was looking for a job, 2012-2014, I had some temporary jobs, I found a permanent job Oct 2014. I don't remember having that issue.

Keep plugging along. Since you have time, you have flexibility.

[warshipadmin]

IT's capture of the word engineer is of course a compliment, the stolen glory of the profession being the attraction I suppose.

[gtg947h]

IT's capture of the word engineer is of course a compliment, the stolen glory of the profession being the attraction I suppose.

It's right up there with bad metadata in search results, especially when the job search site is poor (which I think they all are).

[warshipadmin]

Fortunately I've only ever changed jobs since 1990 by networking and headhunting, so I've never had the pleasure of an online job search. Is LinkedIn any help?

[jemhouston]

IT's capture of the word engineer is of course a compliment, the stolen glory of the profession being the attraction I suppose.

So why is it against the law for an IT tech (me) to hand a screwdriver to an engineer?

[gtg947h]

Fortunately I've only ever changed jobs since 1990 by networking and headhunting, so I've never had the pleasure of an online job search. Is LinkedIn any help?

They're one of the worst offenders, actually The algorithms and recruiters see "systems engineer", entirely miss the "electro-mechanical" before it and the "ing" suffix, and assume I'm in IT. I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than before, when they used to assume I was a structures DER (I don't do structures...)

As far as networking... I've only worked at one company (for 20 years!) in small departments with limited exposure to "the outside". I'm reaching out to the few folks I know or have contacts for but I can't be too overt...

There are only a handful of viable employers in my field up there, and they rarely post positions I'm qualified for. I'm prepared for it to take a while...

[warshipadmin]

That is odd. On reddit I see many posts from recent grads who get sucked into Lockheed to do engineering, and then moan because they are mostly doing what Lockheed call systems engineering and I call clerking. Real systems engineering is good fun, if I had been exposed to it 35 years ago i might well have done a masters in it, but Ford only got serious about it in the wake of an unfortunate tire related debacle, which in fact led to my most recent job, as they got very serious about modelling limit handling.

[Kunkmiester]

I had similar issues when looking for jobs in Seattle ten years ago. The sites couldn't parse the "industrial" part of automation, as well as the other keywords, and 99% of the stuff I was finding was people looking for programmers to automate software testing, not to put robots in factories.

[Pdf27]

Have got a bunch of vacancies in my department you'd probably be interested in, but we're in the wrong country let alone state!

Edit: we've got a couple of places in the US - where exactly is "back home"?

[gtg947h]

Have got a bunch of vacancies in my department you'd probably be interested in, but we're in the wrong country let alone state!

Edit: we've got a couple of places in the US - where exactly is "back home"?

Just south of Atlanta, Georgia... which surprisingly doesn't have that much in the way of aero industry (at least, I'd expect more).

[jemhouston]

Have you changed the wording on the resume and online postings?

[Pdf27]

Might be a bit software-y for you, but it's the only vaguely relevant role I could find. As you said it's a difficult part of the world - you might need to move out of aerospace to find something using the same skills.
https://www.northropgrumman.com/jobs/en ... s-engineer

[Simon Darkshade]

Good luck. It took me 187 applications over 20 months to get a (minimum wage) job a few years back, so I can relate to the frustration.

[warshipadmin]

It took me 70 handwritten applications to get my first job. And I had to walk uphill both ways.

[JBG]

Yeah, good luck.

After 7 1/2 years in my current role (Manager of Legal Services for my agency) I am going through having to apply for the role afresh. In a public service sort of way it makes sense but I have not gone through a formal recruitment process for about 30 years. Not fun.

Jonathan

[jemhouston]

It took me 70 handwritten applications to get my first job. And I had to walk uphill both ways.

Found a picture of you walking to school.

[Craiglxviii]

It took me 70 handwritten applications to get my first job. And I had to walk uphill both ways.

70! If only!

Mind you, at least you didn’t have to write yours out in Welsh…

[gtg947h]

Have you changed the wording on the resume and online postings?

Hasn't helped... too many keywords are common to both and there are something like 30x the number of IT positions out there. Direct searches at known employers are somewhat better but still not great.

Might be a bit software-y for you, but it's the only vaguely relevant role I could find. As you said it's a difficult part of the world - you might need to move out of aerospace to find something using the same skills.
https://www.northropgrumman.com/jobs/en ... s-engineer

Yeah, that's so far outside what I do I'd be starting over... but thanks!

I'm willing to look outside aerospace (and have been) but my experience and that of friends is that I'm "in too deep" and HR at most non-aerospace companies will just round-file an aero major's resume because "we don't do airplanes", regardless of actual experience or how many decades ago you graduated. I kinda wish I'd done civil or mechanical (or at the very oeast taken the FE) and gone into another field, but too late now...


I'm prepared to wait though; I've had multiple applications sit for months before anyone even looked at them. But we also declared a hiring freeze across all of engineering and that almost always means layoffs are coming...

[Pdf27]

Yeah, that's so far outside what I do I'd be starting over... but thanks!

I'm willing to look outside aerospace (and have been) but my experience and that of friends is that I'm "in too deep" and HR at most non-aerospace companies will just round-file an aero major's resume because "we don't do airplanes", regardless of actual experience or how many decades ago you graduated. I kinda wish I'd done civil or mechanical (or at the very oeast taken the FE) and gone into another field, but too late now...

I'm a big believer that most of the skills and experience needed are common across engineering - page 1 of my CV (see below - gap at the top is where my personal details normally are) is all about my skills and capabilities, and you only find out what industry I'm currently in on page 2 with my degree as a footnote. You can look at what you do as "aerospace" and limit yourself, or look at it as "managing complex, safety critical systems in a highly regulated environment" and open up a whole bunch of other roles like medical, nuclear, etc. Doesn't work on everyone, but by and large you can pull it off. I also tend to re-write my CV (Resume) to bring to the centre my experience which is most relevant of the job I'm applying for.

image_2024-11-14_073741834.png

The other question is that are you talking to companies directly or to recruiters/headhunters? YMMV but my experience is that in general if you're talking to a recruiter they're typically much more able to see jobs that you would fit into (they get paid when you take a job, after all) and tend to be better at getting past the initial HR sort of CVs than applying directly.