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Ask Slashdot: Exploiting 'Engineering And ...' On a Resume?

Posted by timothy on from the engineering-engineering-engineering-and-smokin'-the-reefer dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In my younger years, I was briefly employed as an Electrical Engineer. Since 9/11 I have been flying combat missions for the military. Since I now have just a little over a year before becoming a civilian again, I was wondering if any Slashdotters had any applicable advice/anecdotes. How does one effectively combine engineering/development with another professional skill-set? (Being a jet pilot in this example.) For those of you who do hiring, what is the best way to sell this type of background?"

8 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. go work for drone manufacturer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    go work for drone manufacturer

    1. Re:go work for drone manufacturer by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have also heard the same from manager types in private sector, non-military companies. They had told me in no uncertain terms that they equate ex-military with slackers that have an endless variety of ways of getting out of doing any meaningful work. They claimed this was based entirely on past experience of hiring ex-military.

      And when I retired in the late 90's, I heard exactly the opposite. The company (billion dollar multinational), and the CTO, that hired me told me specifically that they like to hire ex-military. I worked for them for almost a decade, and at least 1/3 the IT staff was ex-military.

  2. engineers with combat experience by paul42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just about any military contractor / aerospace company will be interested in hiring you. It won't be hard to find a job. The only tricky part is finding a job you will like.

    1. Re:engineers with combat experience by abirdman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only tricky part is finding a job you will like.

      I believe there's a rule in the US, wherein if someone likes their job that indicates a management mistake. Whenever my job starts to not suck, management messes with it so it sucks again.

      --
      Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
  3. The resume is written for the job and type of job by raymorris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The point of the resume is to show how you are qualified for the job you are applying for. If you apply for several similar jobs, you might submit similar versions of the resume, of course.
    Therefore, how you should present X on your resume depends entirely on what job you're seeking. Since you gave no clue what job you're trying to qualify yourself for, there's no way to answer.

    For example, if you were applying for a job where they are looking for someone who is obsessive about getting every detail exactly precise 100% of the time, such as "nuclear powerplant _____", your resume would indicate that you operated a $30 million plane precisely, delivering your payload with pinpoint precision, where the consequences of error were literally life and death. You'd point to similar aspects of your engineering work - blah blah 6 nanometers blah.

    If you're going for a position where the big deal is leadership and chain of command, tat would be a completely different presentation of your experience.

  4. Re:Accept the difficulty ahead by sconeu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except that his current experience will be of even more use.

    To the submitter: Consider working as a systems engineer for a defense contractor. Seriously. You have a metric crapload of relevant domain knowledge, along with a EE background. I wouldn't be surprised if you could write your own ticket.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  5. Re:Accept the difficulty ahead by sconeu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Quick follow up.

    Systems engineers in this domain don't really do the "building" or even designing per se. Rather, they are the guys who set the requirements. And people like Boeing, Raytheon, LockMart and the rest all love former military because of the domain knowledge. The EE will allow you to inject a dose of reality into whatever specifications get written.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  6. Re:Badly! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Indeed. Wall Street should love the authors resume. The investment banking side of Wall Street loves people who can take orders and at the same time are good at math. All investment banks have a division that does defence related banking or public sector finance - apply there.

    The sales side of the banks love a military pilot too. They probably expect someone who won't break the rules, is well dressed and can talk clearly over the phone. Don't under estimate the skills you learned talking on the headset.

    There is the trading side, which tends to be all over the place when it comes to military backgrounds. Depends on who your boss is going to be.

    Avionics software vendors would hire you as a sales/engineer in a blink . Then there is the defence contractors (whom I don't know much about).