I've graduated as an EE with a focus on the analog and RF side and right now I can find a ton of jobs in my area of study. The catch: everyone is looking for engineers with >10 years experience and rarely will an entry-level position appear. As I continue searching for suitable job openings, I've decided to try for an entry-level software development position (since they're plentiful around Seattle and I have an interest in it). I have do have a little programming experience (intro to java plus data structures and algorithms classes were required of all EE's at my university). Question: What is required of someone to get an entry-level software dev position? [EDIT] A better question would be: If you were interviewing someone for an entry-level software dev position, what do you expect out of that person with respect to the technical side of things? [Edited by - cutthepeace on February 13, 2010 6:44:00 PM]

Quote: Original post by cutthepeace
I've graduated as an EE with a focus on the analog and RF side and right now I can find a ton of jobs in my area of study. The catch: everyone is looking for engineers with >10 years experience and rarely will an entry-level position appear.

They advertise for the experienced positions because it is harder to attract them.

Companies rarely need to advertise for junior level and entry level positions because candidates are practically begging for jobs. Many companies like to go to college job fairs so they can do screening interviews. It is quite convenient to screen out 99% of the applicants when they are lining up at a job fair.


Find the companies you are interested in, and send in unsolicited applications.

Also, attend job fairs in your area -- there are bound to be several since graduation season is coming up.

Quote: Original post by cutthepeace
I've graduated as an EE with a focus on the analog and RF side and right now I can find a ton of jobs in my area of study. The catch: everyone is looking for engineers with >10 years experience and rarely will an entry-level position appear.

Do you want to do software or do you want to do analog and RF?

Getting a job in software will not help you find an analog/RF job later; in fact, it could hurt your chances. You will have more experience, so you will be worth more money, but you will not have experience that is relevant to an analog/RF job.

If you enjoyed your focus of software/RF, don't give up on that so easily.

Employers post listings for the positions that they are having trouble filling. Many companies want to find experienced analog/RF engineers, but there are not enough applicants. If you keep looking, you should find a company that will accept you despite your inexperience. Then, once you have experience, you will be able to find jobs more easily and get better pay with your in-demand specialty.

I just graduated with an EE degree, and I knew I wanted to do a job involving embedded hardware design, not just software. At job fairs, I learned what each position involved and only investigated further into the positions that involved my interests. I focused on a small fraction of the companies at job fairs, and I ended up with a position that I'm happy with.

I think job fairs are a great place to look for jobs. See when your college holds them and if you can still attend as a recent graduate.

Also, have you done any projects related to your specialty or done any relevant internships? I designed embedded systems for my school's solar car team, and I think that helped me both to get my position and to do well once I started working.

The whole job fair thing: at the school's engineering job fair a while back, the common theme: "we don't have anything right now, but plan to have some openings in the spring, but we'll be happy to take your resume;" it was either that, or "just check our website for openings." It's really stupid to have the only engineering career fair 1 month after school starts in the fall instead of spring.

I have no desire to give up on analog/RF and my intent with this is to get hired as a programmer at a company that also hires analog/RF engineers and hopefully try to transition internally from a programmer to an analog/RF engineer should an opening arise.

Unfortunately, it was a big mistake on my part to not to do an internship over the summer (I had two summer classes) or to not slow down and postpone graduation a full year to take an internship (required classes only offered one quarter a year).

Nearly all of the EE classes have lab components and projects. For example an RF circuits class would be: design a 3.3GHz amplifier with 300MHz bandwidth and 16dB gain and signals around 6.6GHz, 9.9GHz should be attenuated (since everything likes to repeat after high frequencies), now build and test. Some analog classes would be: 1) based on the professor's patent, design a filter whose corner frequency can be tuned by reconfiguring the filter to an oscillator via switches and tuning the oscillation frequency (since oscillation frequency and filter corner frequency should have some relation) or 2) design a fully differential opamp with 50MHz bandwidth, 60deg phase margin, 80dB gain, 100dB common-mode rejection, at 1.2V using 130nm technology with grades loosely based on which team had the lowest power consumption when no signal was present...

I like the idea of sending unsolicited applications to companies I'm interested in and will try that. As for career fairs, I guess I'll try to be a little more enthusiastic about them but the previous career fair did not exactly give a morale boost to recent grads.

Quote: Original post by cutthepeace
The whole job fair thing: at the school's engineering job fair a while back, the common theme: "we don't have anything right now, but plan to have some openings in the spring, but we'll be happy to take your resume;" it was either that, or "just check our website for openings."

Translation: "We're hear searching for stellar talent, and you are just okay. Please go through the regular hiring channels."

Quote: I like the idea of sending unsolicited applications to companies I'm interested in and will try that. As for career fairs, I guess I'll try to be a little more enthusiastic about them but the previous career fair did not exactly give a morale boost to recent grads.

The other important component is networking. Talk to everybody you know. Have them ask everybody they know. Make sure that everybody and their dog knows you are looking for an EE job.

Talk to acquaintances, and ESPECIALLY other students -- they just got hired a companies that may be hiring even more people. The peers may be excited to refer you because many companies offer bonuses for successful referrals.

If you can't find any positions that match your resume, start sending your resume to the nearest non-matches anyways. If somebody is looking for 10+ years experience but can't find anybody, they might still hire you for the position (or promote internally and hire you for the low-end position that was made vacant).

Many times, companies put out high-requirement postings just to look for good people. That doesn't mean the position actually requires everything they say. As long as you're honest on your resume, there is a chance it could land you something appropriate even if you don't meet the job requirements. If you can find a match, let the HR people at companies that interest you see if they can find a match for you.