Mechanical Engineering in D.C.: A Job Seekers Guide

So you just graduated/got fired/quit your job because you were tired of doing everyone else's shit with no help from management, now what are you going to do? Although not being employed has some perks, like waking up at the crack of 2pm and walking around your house naked, you probably look into this whole career thing.

For a fledging Mechanical Engineer trying to get his start in the National Capital Region, finding work is a little....difficult...if you're not into the whole HVAC (Heating Ventilating & Air Conditioning) or construction thing. M.E.s with Thermo and Heat Transfer skills will find the NCR a very welcoming place, where as those with experience in machine design or controls will need to push a lot harder to find those jobs in those specialties.

A Note on Location
I want to begin by saying that limiting your search to one geographical location is extremely confining. There are "centers" in America for different things you want to do. Generally speaking, anything that needs a lot of land to do, will not be located anywhere near a city. Airplanes are built in the desert for a reason. When you think of big cities, think of "desk job" with a little bit of a disconnect from the final product (except in HVAC or Construction).

Given this problem with search confinement, some circumstances can require you to confine your search. Perhaps you're married/engaged, or may be all of your friends ended up in one spot, or simply you love the smell of your local cat food factory, but the biggest confinement issue is money. You simply can't just pick up and move to a new city that is big into your specialty with no cash while you are unemployed, the risk is huge. Another kicker is that employers aren't really into hiring someone who is unemployed from outside of their zone of influence. They'd really prefer not to pay relocation expenses or take a hit in the PR department for not bolstering the local economy by hiring an outsider.

So You're Stuck Here!
The National Capital Region isn't all that bad. My distaste for its job market is only because I was a mid-summer graduate (read: out of hiring season graduate) smack in the middle of the most recent recession, resulting in 6 months of unemployment, taking a job that left a bad taste in my mouth for 8, then another 4 of unemployment. Most people wouldn't talk to you if you were an M.E. without a top secret security clearance. But things are much better. The NCR's economy is one of the fastest growing ones in the nation and since it is heavily government, one of the most stable.

Good Enough For Government Work.
If you are one of those people who says "I will never work for the government" the NCR probably is not a good fit for you if you are an engineer. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of companies here who don't contract to the government, but when it boils down to it, the biggest industry here IS government. You can either work for it directly or be a contractor.

Where's The Meat?
Ok, so I've been bumbling on enough about background information that I could go on and on about like that time I...ok, I'll stop. Your question is HOW HOW HOW? Well I'll tell what worked to improve my odds in my search. The theme here is to reach a point where you are not the only one looking for you for a job.

1 - Network
Everyone tells you to do it, so I'll keep this short. Find a friend of a friend of a friend of your mom...whatever. Just talk to people. I highly recommend getting into a trade association like American Society for Mechanical Engineers because they usually hold local meetings with lots of time before and after to talk.
2 - Job Site Whore
This is the meat. Put down those classifieds you found in the paper...they are near useless to you. Buying spots in the classifieds now isn't all that cost effective for the advertising company, so when they do, you know their desperate. Not only that, but hundreds of upperclass twits are looking at them too, so it might be hotly contested over. No the Intarweb is where it's at, and you need to set up an aggressive "ME, baby, ME" marketing scheme.
---2.1: Internet Sites. This was my observed ranking among internet job sites for the D.C. area based on volume of jobs and which companies used them.

1) www.monster.com
2) www.careerbuilder.com
3) www.usajobs.com
4) www.washingtonjobs.com
5) www.hotjobs.com
6) www.dice.com
7) www.flipdog.com
8) www.thingamajob.com
9) www.hirehealth.com

---2.2 Resume Whore. We all have several interests and abilities within our field, but we only have one resume. Glory to this is that each of these sites allow multiple resumes to be listed in their database. Have different resumes to target different industries.
---2.3 Getting those clicks. Premium access puts your name at the top of searches but who knows how effective that is. It could just scream "Desperate". Make creative titles for each of your multiple resumes on each of these sites like "Fluid Mechanics Engineer" or "Control Systems Engineer". Me? I am big on Robotics. "Robotics Engineer" "Electro-Mechanical Engineer" "C4IS Engineer" (learn buzzwords to the industry as well) The header is everything to your resume. Mine usually had the title with "(1yr Exp.)" tacked on at the end. The resume should also be taylored to the title with the relevant experience for that field at the top. Also related to my buzzword comment, go to big time company sites and search their databases for job titles.
---2.4 Persistance. A lot of these sites have tracking information like how many times your resume appeared in search results, or how many views you got. Keep tabs of names your resumes and experiment with the effectiveness of the words you put in the header. I rotated mine every week and a half to two weeks. But here is another key: Visit every site, every day, and hit that "update resume" or "post resume" or "reconstitute resume" because many times, search results come up with names listed by how recently active a resume is. People don't want to see that this resume has been up for 5 weeks, they'll assume you're not looking anymore. Assume the same about job listings this old on these sites as well.
---2.4 Give it up for everyone... Almost everyone. Any midsize to big company will have internet job application/resume database sites. Give them your resume. Where do you find a listing of the bigwigs for the area? The Washington Posts: Post 200 is an excellent source for this.

3 - "Here I am using my own brain like a sucker"
There are a lot of opportunities to work on a Contract basis with companies. Companies usually ask an engineering recruiting firm to find them a candidate to work on projects for a set amount of time. This allows the employer to avoid all the work it requires to set up a new employee (set up benefits, pay roll, etc.), then subsequently terminating the employee after the end of the job (which requires a hefty amount of work), and just pays the recruiting firm X amount of dollars for the contracted amount of time. I got about 6 offers during the economic slump for contract work (4 of which were in Tennessee). The good thing about contract work is they pay you a higher pay rate because you have to pay for your own healthcare provider. So these recruiters find candidates in two ways 1) Pulling from their own resume database pool, 2) Pulling from sites listed above. Find recruiters and register in their databases to maximize your exposure (Google terms: engineering, recruiter, contract). What are they getting out of it? For every hour you work, they get a piece of your soul/paycheck/babymaker.

Another good thing about these recruiters is that they not only find contract work for you, they can also find you a "contract-to-hire" job. This would mean you would do work for company X for the contracted time (getting paid through the recruiter), and at the end of the assignment (if they liked you) you would be hired full time by company X. I had the best luck (and granted, the only one I registered with) with Aerotek, Inc.

4 - Publish That Shiz!
Now I never got to far with this, but I know a few people who have. Set up your professional website. Put your multiple resumes up and google-ize the shit out of it. Put buzzwords in your metatags, put up examples of your work. You are no longer confined by the borders of those stuffy websites I listed above...but by all means, don't put any info in there that could be used for identity theft like middle names. Phone numbers and email are alright, but set up a temp email address because spambots will probably pick up your "mailto:" link and sign you up for every penis pump catalog out there.

I think that about covers it. I invite anyone who actually IS in the HR business to say "yes this is good", "You could try this also", or "no this is all wrong...no wonder you were unemployed for so long."