Don't fear length. The more pages of facts, the better. There are places where the one-page condensed version is useful, but if you are going for a job, the more meat the better. There must be no padding whatsoever. The very worst thought you can put into your reader's mind is "phony."
Interviews
When you are interviewed, ask questions as well as answer them. Have a list of questions ready. You will gain respect for doing so. Be neither arrogant nor humble. Genuine self-respect is impressive.
Give free samples if you can. Decide on your willingness to "dress for success." If you feel that you should dress to suit yourself and it's none of anybody else's business, choose geographical areas and companies whose culture accepts that.
Shocks You Can Get
In any job in any organization you may get unexpected, unearned, and violent shocks. You are advised to make contingency plans so that you will be ready if one occurs. Among these shocks are:
- Layoff
There are small-scale layoffs too, to clear deadwood, when business slows down. With a little laziness, negligence, and personal unpleasantness one can qualify oneself as deadwood.
- Technological Obsolescence
Your job can be lost from government party switches. The other party, coming into power, moves budget items up or down. International agreements change defense budgets.
- New Boss
Happy Shocks
One last word about shocks: there are happy ones too. You may get a surprise promotion or assignment because there is a sudden opening and the manager has had an eye on you. On the chance that this might happen, you could do worse than to prepare yourself and to look good to that manager.
What Should You Do about It?
Network
Actively build and maintain a network of professional and business friends and contacts. Join your technical society and be active in it. Attend technical meetings and make friends. Give papers. Make the branch-point decisions described above. Regularly study trade journals and newspaper help-wanted ads and company catalogs and have a shopping list ready, just in case.
Build your resumed In making study, work, society membership, and other decisions, think whether the results will appear favorably in your resume.
Save Money
You can shop longer for a better job when you don't desperately need a job. Furthermore, your self-confidence is hurt by financial anxiety and helped by the feeling of financial security. In turn, your job security is helped by your appearance of self-confidence and hurt by your appearance of anxiety.
It will not come as a total surprise to you that it does not hurt your job security if you work hard, do advanced study, and are a cooperative and likable person.
Improve Your Qualifications
Improve your qualifications for other jobs and, at the same time, for promotion in your present job:
- Study for an advanced degree, at night, if you think you can handle the work both academically and within family obligations. If you have management or entrepreneurial ambitions, get an M.B.A. Consider whether you can finance full-time day study. If you can, it is easier, does a better job, and gets you there sooner.
- Get your P.E. license.
- Take extension courses and professional society courses. Your company will probably pay the tuition, but this is a good investment even if you pay.
- Read a lot: technical books, other nonfiction, fiction. At the very least, your supervisors and prospective employers will recognize you as an educated person and respect you for it.
Women engineers have a competitive advantage over men when you first graduate because of affirmative action. However, the tendency is to hire women but not to promote them very fast, if at all. Try to learn your prospective employer's track records in this matter.
Your prospective employer would love to know your plans regarding marriage and children, but it is absolutely illegal to ask you. It is not illegal for you to tell voluntarily, however. If you plan to suspend your career very soon to raise a large family without nursery schools, you need not say anything about it. But if you plan to take short maternity leaves and get right back to work, it won't hurt you to volunteer the fact.
If you want to participate in the equality struggle, join any women's organizations you choose, including the Society of Women Engineers, but do not help create or join a woman's technical society, or you will be perpetuating your status as a second-class citizen. Join a regular technical society as a member, not as a woman.
Sales Engineering
A sales engineer is not a salesperson. You do not knock on doors, cultivate purchasing agents and secretaries, buy lunches, and ultimately bring back the order. The sales engineer is technical staff to the salesperson, who must do all those things. You are introduced by the salesperson to technically qualified opposite numbers in the customer's organization. Your job is to teach the product, apply the product to solve the customer's problems, which can take high-level engineering, advise the customer how to modify a problem to be able to use the product to advantage (this is called "consultative selling"), give the customer whatever other consulting assistance you can (thereby enhancing the prestige of your own organization), write a technical report of the visit, and write a technical proposal if appropriate. The salesperson takes over from there.
The work provides wonderful opportunities to propose improvements in your own products, to devise new products, and to see the real world of people, products, and factories.
