DILEMMA: WITH MY INABILITY TO GET ENGINEERING JOB, I FEAR FOR MY ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE
Good day sir
My name is Temitope O. I hold a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering, and a Bachelors degree in Agricultural Engineering, of which I graduated with wonderful results for the two degrees. However the issue is, I work in a telecoms company as an online call centre agent, but I have vast knowledge in PDMS, AUTOCAD AND AUTODESK INVENTOR, of which I train people on CAD Softwares and I have created tutorials videos online, but I am afraid my knowledge and competency in the Engineering field might fade away if I don’t get a job in an engineering firm as I will be clocking 30 next year…what can I do Sir?!
Thank you in anticipation of a favorable response.
*****
I passed this case to one of my team members with Mechanical Engineering background:
ABDULWASIU BALOGUN
Wasiu holds a first degree in Mechanical Engineering from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria and Msc in Sub Sea Engineering from University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where he finished with Distinction. He has worked in oil and gas engineering services industry in Nigeria and abroad for more than 6 years.
Good morning Temitope. From your mail I can say you have got a good and commendable qualification and deserve a chance in an engineering outfit, and I believe you can soon get it with the right information, guidance, and preparation.
I will be advising you based on my experience (6+ years) in the oil and gas engineering services, and to understand where my advice will be coming from I would like to let you in to what I have been doing for all these years.
I work as a piping stress engineer (analyst), presently working on an FPSO (Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading) detailed engineering design. I was trained abroad as a piping stress engineer. First degree in Mechanical Engineering, M.Sc. in Subsea Engineering, and registered with COREN, so I can tell very well with your CAD experience where you will fit in an engineering (servicing) firm but then you have to be ready to accept and adapt to other relevant engineering areas (after all, you already have both agricultural and mechanical qualifications.).
I would like to point out and commend the effort you are already putting into developing yourself in CAD and even training others, it shows you already have a vision and direction of what you want to be doing, now with that, these are what you can do:
1. Continue all the CAD software training both online and class room, join online groups of CAD users and forums to keep abreast of new development in the CAD, have a development plan to become a CAD admin., I am confident with patience, persistence, and preparation you will be very fine. From my experience I know engineering companies sometime contract all their CAD trainings to other companies and most times just 1 or 2 persons are sufficient to handle it, however, you need to demonstrate some significant level of experience to convince them. With the right experience you can form a collaboration with intl. companies like Integraph or Bentley. And in Nigeria, engineering outfit like Lonadek may be a very good place for someone with this kind of experience.
2. With your CAD experience + qualification, and the right opportunity to join an engineering (servicing) firm you will be rightly suitable for a junior position in the Piping and Layout department where you can start as a piping modeller or designer, and then a piping engineer. But to boost your chances you will have to also learn piping material selection and basic stress analysis and piping supports, all these are pretty straightforward to learn for someone with your kind of background. While you wait for this opportunity, you can start learning all stuffs about piping from relevant ebooks available online(Piping Drafting and Design, ASME B31.3. I must confess you will have to do some reading in preparation. Other relevant areas you can fit in with your Mechanical qualification are Static and Rotating equipment, where you design vessels, furnace, heaters, air coolers, pumps, compressors etc as they all relate to the process plants.
Companies in Nigeria that appreciate this kind of experience and offer hands-on work experience on major projects include; Saipem, Crestech, IESL, Dover Engineering, Netco, Kohasa etc with the right and timely info. you could get a chance at their interviews.
Like I pointed out earlier, you should be willing to adapt to other relevant areas that are not strictly about CAD modelling but with some engineering calculations, design, and analysis.
I understand your fear especially with your present place of work but if you can keep up with 1. (above) while you are still at it then it will just be a matter of time before you strike gold. And if 2. is your preferred plan then you can start developing yourself in that direction while you wait for the right opportunity from relevant firms.
Dear jarus,I am elvis an environmental engineering student of the university of portHarcourt in level 400…my story goes thus: when I gained admission I had just started learning guitar and was developing interest,so I intended to learn it along with my progam.This involved me practicing eveyday in yr one for say 1-2hrs…i improved but my cgpa was not reflective of my ability,as I was never able to complete materials..It was 3.2 in year one,whereas my friend from sec school had a 4.3…in year 2 I was practicing eveyday and was motivated because I was improving…then I had 3 E’s which destroyed the cgpa…I left the guitar for the next semester but then the general faculty result was bad,hence the year 2 GPA Was about 2.2..I was discouraged cos I read that semester…in yr three I wrote well only to gather 2.2 again..now in year 4 I’m confused,hurt that I can’t make a 2.1 again..most of the poor results are not my fault…I’m thinking of doing another first degree as my cgpa is 2.6..I want to have a strong certificate….I don’t want to hurt my parents…should I have waited till school over to learn guitar?I feared I would lose passion as consistency is important in practice…I am 21 this year…should I run another engineering program?what is your professional advice?