Finished university this summer with a Bsc in agricultural engineering.

As you guessed it agriculture plays a big part of my life being a contract shepherd during holidays.

My dad wants me to get an engineering job as soon as possible as the longer I leave it he thinks it’ll be harder to get a job in a year’s time.

Basically I’m asking how important is the time frame between finishing uni and getting in the career?

Head to New Zealand and spend a year working on farms out there, that’d do more for your prospects than staying here.

Depends what you’re doing in the mean time. I imagine that bigger companies will be looking to recruit at this time of year, and those fresh out of uni are probably more appealing in terms of mouldability.

I can tell you from experience (I had a nightmare finding a job after I graduated) that the longer you leave it the more difficult it gets. You need to be able to show that you’ve been keeping your skills sharp.

You never know, if you find a grad scheme it might start in a couple of months which gives you some time to enjoy summer. Nothing wrong with looking, you might find something perfect.

The guy who owns the house we rent moved out to Australia to work on farming machinery (he was a sparky) and has decided to stay. He’s managed to make himself invaluable.

I spent a year already between university and sixth form. I’m not sure if i want to go into engineering and if I do it would be the solid works side of things. Is it worth doing a year’s SOLIDWORKS part time?

Your career will be waiting for you so take some time out and do stuff that you won’t be able to do when you’re working. I wish i’d done something before starting work. Even better if during your time out you do something useful rather than go on a holiday, and actually turn it into something impressive for when you come back and start applying for jobs. For example spend some time working for a charity especially if you’re in some form of leadership role.

There is a huge shortage of engineers and I don’t think that is going to change any time soon. Not only are there few engineers coming out of uni, but people who do and go into engineering are not being retained and leaving to work in other more lucrative careers after a few years. The engineering company I work for has about a 50% retention rate graduate Engineers. Pretty crap really. Most F-off down to London to become consultants. Not sure what someone with only a couple of years experience could possibly be consulted in, but that is a whole other subject.

My dad wants me to get an engineering job as soon as possible as the longer I leave it he thinks it’ll be harder to get a job in a year’s time.

I think he is right. In fact I think he is 3-6 months too late! We employ graduate level engineers (not CAD/agri so it may not be directly comparable)…
– the calibre of candidates we see in July-October is much poorer than in Jan-May: the best candidates have already found jobs / been snapped up by the competition. We are typically left with the reject pile and those who have no clear plan / direction so thought they’d work something out after graduation.
– we do see CVs from graduates from the previous year, either out of work or doing something totally irrelevant to pay the bills. If we are sifting a lot of CVs its easy to make some assumptions about how good (i.e. bad) that candidate is if in the current market they haven’t found a relevant job. That would be most concerning if the candidate had been unemployed for that time.
– we do get CVs from people who have done something really interesting (but not directly relevant) for 1 or 2 years. They are more likely to get through the sifting process than those I’ve just mentioned BUT we do find they tend to be a bit rusty on the technical skills at interview.
– we also find that people who have been working in say Tesco for a year are more disappointed with the value their degree earns them as a new grad, compared to those coming straight from Uni. (it takes us 3-6 months before a grad is adding any value to the business, during which time they are sucking a lot of supervision/support, so in reality we are hiring grads for what they can offer in 12 months not right now – someone seems to have been telling them they are all worth £25k p.a. though!).
– we don’t want to be “you need to have experience to get in the door” but increasingly we are seeing graduates coming with work placement, internship or personal project portfolios that prove they can do more than pass exams. So yes, if you build some amazing Solid Works portfolio it would I am sure help your position when you come to look – but don’t kid yourself that projects for fun at your own pace, with no real external scrutiny are as challenging as the customer ones. Beware though that takes a lot more dedication than you might think – its very easy to have a portfolio of unfinished work which has a negative impact.

So in summary, if you are outstanding and have a well structured CV that tells a great story it isn’t going to matter either way. If you are average you might stand out against whats left from this year’s alumni, but if you are mediocre (which might just be that your CAD skills are weaker than people who focussed on a pure design engineering degree) then if you leave it until after Christmas you will be up against next year’s superstars.

There is a huge shortage of engineers and I don’t think that is going to change any time soon

Can’t speak for everywhere, but if you’re anywhere near Aberdeen this isn’t really the case any more due to huge numbers of O&G redundancies in the last few years.

Lots of graduate schemes have been axed too.

The company I work for had numerous experienced engineers applying for an entry level role recently. Changed times from a few years back.

They should come down south then.They’ll get a job tomorrow. Obviously not in the O&G industry.

edit: Oh, and not on the salary they were earning in O&G. My brother is one of the lucky ones up in Aberdeen to still have his job. He’s earning ALOT of money for effectively the same job I was doing in my last role. You’re not going to see anything like that out of O&G.

Oh and on the timings thing – it’s an annual thing. A few months here and there is not going to make any difference. Even if you go contracting for a short while.

Life is short. You’re going to be sat behind a desk for the bulk of it, so while you got the chance to take some time out and go do something the advice from someone who didn’t, went straight into work and has been here for the last 20 years and is not waiting for retirement to do some stuff I should have done years ago is: DO IT!!

Companies look for candidates with a rounded character – its not all just about qualifications and CV’s. They’ll be facing thousands of candidates with all the same qualifications and experiences. Having something on your CV that makes you stand out will be a positive thing and the sort of thing companies look out for.

My biggest regret in life is that I didn’t take a year out after uni to go travelling.

I think you’ll be OK as long as you can convince a prospective employer 1) You’re better than the current intake, and 2) got a valid reason for not going straight into your chosen profession.

My missus spent a year working as a clerk at the local courts after qualifying as a teacher before taking an NQT job. A mate of mine who got a 3rd in Aero Eng took 3 years before he secured a job in the industry (admittedly he spent 3 years trying to get in the profession and it took that long – 10/10 for effort and tenacity!).

I work for one of the UK’s largest engineering companies – we still run a graduate programme with an intake of ~200/year from September and this was done and dusted months ago. The UK is facing a chronic shortage of technical skills in the next 15 years with about 40% of the workforce retiring – this amounts to 50,000/yr for the next 10 years – unfortunately there are only 30,000 graduate/yr leaving university. Consequences of Brexit will probably make this worse, unless we do an immigration deal with India. Competition for places is still high as few employers offer traditional grad scheme. Depends on what you’re looking for – taking a year out will make little difference to your career prospects as employers are looking for more rounded people with a diverse range of experiences.

They should come down south then.They’ll a job tomorrow. Obviously not in the O&G industry.

I can understand them not wanting to do that. ‘Live somewhere further from the awesomeness of Scotland, with much higher living costs, for a much lower salary? Where do I sign!?’

OP: I’m tempted to agree with most RE taking a year out being a good idea. I happened to land at a job at the end of uni so didn’t take any time out. It’s a lot more hassle to arrange that much time out once you have a job, house etc.

The only advice I would give is not to listen to your dad – do what you want to do.

Agreed on the New Zealand thing, best thing you’ll do given that your degree is agric eng rather than plain agric.

As an industry, the Kiwis are very big on early technology uptake, will give you a totally different take on what’s possible in farming (and forestry for that matter) compared to the British or European approach.

I can understand them not wanting to do that. ‘Live somewhere further from the awesomeness of Scotland, with much higher living costs, for a much lower salary? Where do I sign!?’

Whilst I won’t disagree with you about the awesomeness of Scotland I will disagree with the rest. The reality is the time of overpaid engineering jobs in the O&G industry in Aberdeen are well and truly over even if thing do pick up. My dad has been on the rigs since the beginning of North Sea oil and just retired doing an engineering job that wouldn’t attract a particularly good salary in any other industry, but yet he’s practically a millionaire. This was never sustainable and for the last 5 years or so there was alot of pressure for my dad to take a big pay cut, but he was in a fortunate position where he could just say he’ll retire rather than take a pay cut so they kept him on and extending his contract, until finally they gave him the ultimatum and he hung up his hard hat.

My brother is one of the lucky ones in Aberdeen to still have a job and very well paid it is too compared to the same job in any other industry. But again if they were taking new people on they would be on far lower salaries.

When I say down south I was actually referring to the midlands, so not exactly expensive to live. In fact there is so much industry around here the east midlands has something like the 5th highest average salary due to big engineering employers like Rolls-Royce, Bombardier, Toyota, JCB, Jaguar Land Rover and many others who are constantly taking people on, in fact the company I work for is in the process of taking on about 800 engineers – most will probably be contractors transitioning over to permanent jobs, but there will be hundreds of new vacancies to fill. There is always a constant turn-over of people in large companies like this. And though Scotland is a very pretty place to live, Derbyshire and the surrounding area aint half bad too. Great countryside, awesome mountain biking, the best beer in the country, the home of the Pork Pie, Stilton cheese, Marmite, Bakewell puddings and such local delicacies as the Derbyshire Pikelet. What more could you want??

What more could you want?

Proper sized hills? 😉