To those who blame college students for majoring in the wrong subjects, [View all]

[pnwmom]

you might reconsider if you looked into the situation more. The problem is with entry level jobs everywhere, even in fields like engineering. Why should they hire B.S.'s with no paid experience when they can easily hire someone with five years experience for the same salary?

Here are some examples of struggling new graduates in the Mechanical Engineering field.

http://www.indeed.com/forum/job/mechanical-engineer/Entry-Level-Mechanical-Engineer/t154022

"I graduated in 08 with a B.S., Mechanical Engineering degree from a good University in Michigan (3.14 GPA) and have not been able to find anything. I apply for mostly janitorial and technician work now while I work at Meijer for 7.85 / hour. People look at me like I am some kind of idiot when I have my Meijer shirt on. I feel like I wasted my time and money getting this ridiculously hard degree with nothing to show for it but $55,000 of debt. Sorry for venting (whining), but I just don't know what to do anymore."

"Hi guys, I'd totally agree with a lot of the comments going up. I'm graduating from the University of Kansas (BSME). I get "Do you have any work experience?" all of the time. It's kind of hard to tell them "No, but it's the job markets fault" Can't exactly pull in an internship if I have to compete with people all over the country. What would you guys suggest the correct answer to that question should be?"

"I graduated from Clemson University in August 08' with my MSME (3.5 GPA)I haven't had a single interview. I moved to San Diego in May of 09' and I've been working at Costco making $11/hr ever since."

"Damn I got BSME in June 2009, 3.3 gpa still no job. I had 2 real interviews recently and dozen phone interviews and still no luck. I need some entry level position where I would get opportunity to learn. I think I am going to concentrate on practical experience in this letter. It’s not enough to get formal education to become a successful engineer. Theoretical studies and lab work are great, but it’s not possible to cover all specializations in university. Employers specially in small companies are not really interested to hire entry level engineers and this is understandable, they need job to be done, not mentoring some young people or may be company needs one professional engineer and there’s no other engineers in that company. To become a technical professional you must learn particular processes and that requires some amount of time. Many graduates with degrees in engineering feel like they had illusions about their studies choice and turn their talents in other fields either because of financial benefits or because they can’t get a chance of technical experience that requires long time of mentoring."

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So the kind of comment I see over and over again is that it's not enough to have an engineering degree -- that employers want engineers with experience. And they don't want to train them themselves. So they hire someone with a few years experience instead of a new grad.