For many jobs that you apply for, the first thing that a potential employer will see is your resume and cover letter.  Here are a few tips for your resume.  I’ve posted a layout that has worked well for me in the past. Sample Resume.

Keep it simple and easy to read

Hiring managers don’t have a lot of time to try and figure out what you’re saying.  Us an easy to read layout like the sample I posted.  1 inch margins, clear sections, bullet points in each section.

But not to simple

Make sure you don’t sell yourself short.  Include enough important facts about yourself to show the potential employer how great you are.

Be relevant

Look at the company’s website and at any job adds the company may have out.  Make sure you tailor your resume to show your skills that are important to that company.  Listing things about yourself that would appeal to that employer.

When I worked retail I got a resume from a kid.  On the resume he said that he could hold a hissing cockroach without flinching.  We thought that was great, but it didn’t help us any.  He didn’t get an interview.  We had limited time and other people talked about relevant skills.

Be specific

List specific accomplishments.  Being specific shows the potential employer what you have accomplished and what you might be able to do for them.  Specifics work much better than generic phrases like: I’m a go getter, or I’m responsible.  Say it with specifics.

Target your resume

Don’t use the same resume for every company that you apply to.  Make adjustments to your resume so that you highlight the things about you that are most important to that particular company.

Don’t lie

Integrity is very important in the engineering profession.  You will hear about engineering ethics a lot. When you get caught, and you will, it will be known.  It can hurt your career.

No work experience? Talk about school.

If you’re still in school, employers know that you won’t have a lot of experience.  List the engineering classes that you’ve taken.  Talk about any scholarships or awards that you’ve won.  List some projects that you’ve done.

Those are some of the tips I’ve followed when working on my resumes.  For those of you that have been down this road before, what are your recommendations?

With the new semester starting up soon it’s time to get into learning mode.  Most people remember to sign up for the right classes to get there degree, but a lot of people don’t know about, or don’t go after one of the most important learning tools you can get as a student; an internship.  Over the coming days I’m going to post some articles on how to find internships, how to prepare your resume, what to expect at an interview, first day on the job, and other things along those lines.  But today I’m going to talk about why an internship is important.  Here’s a list of why every civil engineering student should get an internship.  In no particular order.

You get paid

Most internships pay.  Civil engineering interns get paid pretty well compared to most jobs you can get while in college.

Learn how it works in the real world

You learn a lot of great theory and background in school.  But frequently you never really see how that works out in the real world.  In an internship you get to see first hand how the process works in your field.

You get to work on real projects

This is perhaps the best part.  You get to actually use what you’ve been learning and learn new stuff that can help you in school.  Sometimes the projects that you work on in your internship can go more in depth in a week than you will get in a semester in one of your classes.  Plus they are all things you can put on your resume for when you graduate.

Your bosses understand

If you have a civil engineering internship chances are you’ll be working for someone with a civil engineering degree.  They’ve been where you are.  They know what it takes to get and engineering degree.  They are willing to help out.

Credit at school

Many schools will give you credit for internships.  The school I went to would let you get up to three credits and could count it as one of your electives.  Get with your adviser before the semester starts to find out what your school can do.

You get paid more after you graduate

People with experience get paid more than people without experience.  Having an internship on your resume shows that you know what you are getting into and that you know how to do things.  That will make you instantly more marketable than people with no experience.  That could mean not only more money in a job offer, but also more job offers.

Easier to get a job after you graduate

An internship does two main things to help you get a job after you graduate.  It gets your foot in the door for any companies that you work for.  It also gives you specific experience and accomplishments that you can put on your resume.

Find out what you like and what you don’t

I had a friend in college that every summer he worked for a different firm that did a different kind of engineering.  He definitely had the chance to try it all out and find what he liked.

An internship is worth more than a 4.00

While I was in school, and since then, I’ve talked to a lot of engineers that hire for their companies.  It’s been pretty consistent.  They say they’d rather see an internship on a resume than a 4.00 GPA.

A side note on this.  If you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for civil engineers http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm you’ll see that starting salaries for a bachelors degree is higher than a masters degree.  From what I’ve see, that’s pretty consistent for several different places that collect that data.  Based on the people I knew in college I think it’s because most of the people that have a bachelors degree also had an internship.  Most of the people that I know that went straight for their masters after getting a bachelors degree, did not get an internship.  Internships and the experience you get is very valuable.  I’m not telling you not to go after a masters degree, just make sure that you get some real world experience also.

Those are some of the main reasons that I came up with to get an internship.  What are some of your reasons?  What have you gained from your internship?  Any reasons why you think someone shouldn’t get an internship?

I’m going to make a couple of points today. First of all, when you are new to civil engineering and first learning to calculate things like concrete columns and roadway curves, it can seem like everything that is in the real world is over designed. There are many rules and regulations that must be followed in your designs. My second point is about engineering ethics. All of the rules can’t cover everything.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge

Every civil engineering student gets to see the one of the videos of the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse. I was shown this video in three or four different classes in school. If you haven’t seen the video here’s one I found on YouTube. This one is in color and has some additional information.

As far as I’ve been able to find out, the engineers followed the standard rules of the day. By their calculations the bridge should have been fine. But it wasn’t. It collapsed four months after being finished. The engineers fail to account for wind. In a lot of ways, because of this bridge, we have to take into account aerodynamics when designing virtually any structure. Not just aerodynamics, though, we as engineers need to take into account every potential source of forces that may affect our structures.

I 35W Bridge

Here’s a video of the I 35W bridge collapse in Minnesota. This bridge had held well for many years. The initial design could handle the current expected loads. However, later engineers didn’t fully account for additional loads from improvements to the bridge. Specifically, it appears that the gusset plates didn’t have a large enough safety factor. More information on the cause can be found in this article about the University of Minnesota’s Independent Study. According to the study, in addition to the gussets and later improvements, temperature changes played a large role in the collapse. These kinds of things should be considered in an original design. They also need to be double checked when making improvements.

Cypress Street Viaduct
This third video has two parts. One is about the Cypress Street Viaduct and the other about a dam at a coal mine. The Cypress Street Viaduct is another bridge that collapsed due to greater than expected forces. In this case an earthquake. The bridge was designed to easily handle the vertical loads, however they didn’t account for the lateral loads caused by an earthquake. They really only considered enough lateral load to handle wind.

All three of these videos show reasons that we have some of the design standards that we do. We have to include all of the forces that will act on the structure. Not only the everyday forces, but also expected maximum forces. Then we add a safety factor on top of that to take into account anything we didn’t think of.

The second half of that last video adds something else to this. The dam collapsed even though engineers at the time knew how to construct a safe dam. At the time, however, there were no regulations on this type of dam. To save money no engineering was actually done, and no standard maintenance or construction standards were followed. This resulted in the dam collapsing. What this means to us as engineers is that even if there isn’t a law saying that we have to do something a certain way, we should still do it the right way.

Engineering ethics is extremely important to civil engineers. This is one of the few industries where people can get seriously hurt or killed if we don’t do things the right way. Because of that, follow the law and approved standards. If they don’t provide enough guidance then use your engineering judgment and the experience of experts to do the right thing.

Have you had any experience where the standards didn’t meet the needs of you project? What kinds of things have you seen?

This is a debate that has been going on for a long time.  And you will find people that defend each side very well.  This is also an important question that we, as young engineers, face.  This decision will most likely influence our careers in the future.

Matt Barcus wrote a great article called MSCE vs. MBA – Lets Get Ready to Rumbllllle on this question for Civil Engineering Central.  More than a dozen people shared their insights.  The article covers many of the pros and cons to each degree program.  The conclusion that he draws in the end is that even though both are great and can help your career “one should pursue their MSCE first, and then only consider pursuing an MBA after spending a decent amount of time in the trenches.”  The basic reasoning behind that seems to come from two main ideas. First, most consulting firms were started and are run by PEs and the MSCE is what your employers will be looking for.  Second, no matter what master’s degree you have, you will be expected to spend several years learning design before you are introduced to project management.

I agree with the conclusion and the reasoning when it comes to private consulting firms.  Especially when considering small and medium sized firms.  However, there a few other important points that I think should be considered when making a decision.  I’ve talked with PEs and other engineers working in many types of environments including military, civil service, municipalities, engineering consulting firms, and private firms that employ CEs.  I’ve come up with some other things that should be considered.

1)      What type of career path do you want to follow?

There are three basic types of career paths that CEs can follow: become a technical expert, project management, and corporate leadership.

Obviously the technical expert will gain the most from the MSCE.  Since they are hired to lead teams to solve difficult problems in their field, the more education they have the better.

Project managers have to have more general knowledge.  They will oversee projects that cover several engineering disciplines.  They will also have to plan, schedule, budget, etc…  An MSCE will certainly help them understand the engineering better as well as help them teach and lead their teams better.  Because of the management aspects of the job, a good understanding of basic management would greatly help them streamline their projects.  An executive MBA or a few carefully chosen classes could help them round out their knowledge.

Corporate leadership is more of a business job than an engineering job, but in the engineering world even the corporate leaders need to understand the engineering side.  This type of job works a lot with marketing, public relations, accounting and other business functions.  An MBA would be very helpful, but an MSCE would not help as much.

2)      Where do you want to work?  What kind of engineering do you want to do?  How do you want to get there?

When I graduated from college I joined a design firm to do design work, one classmate of mine went to work doing project management on the civilian side of the Air Force, another joined the Navy and another is managing at a quarry.

We all have very different career paths ahead of us.  Our employers have different expectations and requirements.  It doesn’t matter that we all have the same degree from the same school.  Nor that we all consider ourselves civil engineers.  So we are all leaning in different directions to meet our employers’ needs and to get us where we want to be.

Because of the employers needs, some employers will pay for one degree or the other.  Most consulting firms will pay for an MSCE possibly not an MBA.  Many other organizations only see the value of the MBA and will only pay for that.

3)      Changes in the rules.

One other important thing to consider is that recently The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) changed its model laws to require 30 hours of engineering classes be taken after getting the BS to take the PE Exam.  The goal is for that to take effect on January 1, 2015.  The model laws are only guidelines for the states to follow.  The state licensing board has the final say in what the requirements are.  Currently no state that I know of has made that one of their requirements.  But I am sure it is coming.  If you are planning to take the PE exam make sure you check your state’s rules when you get close to your time.

It looks to me that the most important thing is to look at your career path, where you want to go and how you want to get there.   Then make a decision about a master’s program.  What do you think?  Anything else that should be considered?