119 replies to this topic

[jvl]

Well I have been trying for 3 years now and no luck at all.

I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering with first class honours, I have worked on Formula Fords and Formula SAE, so I have pratical racing experience. I have taken a 10 day course on Catia, which cost me $5000 and I have some experience with Fluent, Ansys C++ and Visual Basic.

But with no luck at all. Everyone who I send a letter out get rejected. I fyour wondering I have applied to F1 teams to chassis manufacturers and even to lowly supercars team.

I'm wondering if I should rethink my direction in my engineering career becasue motorsport has only brought me trouble and heartbreak.

What do you think guys.

[Chevy II Nova]

Having friends in high places helps. I was able to make contact with a senior engineer for one of the teams, and hope to build a relationship that will get me into F1. You have any friends of friends to contact?

[Patrice L'Rodent]

JVL, Whereabouts are you located?
Pat

[Greg Locock]

Without wishing to annoy you, why exactly would a racing team take on someone with 10 days experience of Catia, and a working knowledge of Visual Basic, Fluent, C++ and Ansys?

They can already get experienced people with a track record in one, or at most two, (and I emphasise that) of those packages. Get some concentrated experience and the jobs may follow.

I doubt that anyone who has not done two years full time using one of those packages would really be considered as anything more than a journeyman, and that is not what the racing teams are looking for - they can afford to pick and choose.

Frankly we are in the same boat - why should we take on any of the hundreds of thousands of people who want to get into automotive engineering, when experienced people are already available?

[richdubbya]

You need to make a list of all the different forms of motorsports, with the highest level at the top and in decending order. Go down the list until you come to the spot where you are not just qualified but well qualified, over qualified. You start there working for free, you become the best at that level and and get to know everyone on the best teams at that level, and you work your way up, one level at a time.

[desmo]

Sounds like a degree in Mechanical Engineering with first class honors is hardly worth the paper it's printed on in the automotive field. What a shame, I'll bet some of the places you applied could use some fresh blood to re-energize them and supply new perspectives to the challenges they face. It's not like they are all doing that great with what they've got is it? There's obviously a lot to be said for experience, but frequently along with the competence experience provides it is accompanied by a narrowing of vision of the possibilities (I can see that happening in my own life)- problems sometimes need to be viewed through eyes not completely indoctrinated in the status quo. I recently took on the task of helping someone enter in my field and she questioned many of the ideas I took as gospel, and you know what? It opened my mind to some new perspectives just having to explain all my preconcieved notions. Youth obviously has it's own limitations, but it supplies things to an organization that no amount of experience can. Sounds like it's the classic old boys network, now we just need some of the old boys to discover the joys of golf in retirement.

[FrankB]

Originally posted by desmo
Sounds like a degree in Mechanical Engineering with first class honors is hardly worth the paper it's printed on in the automotive field.

And not just degrees in Mechanical Engineering... I recall working on a major construction project in the eighties. The main contractor took on four graduate Civil Engineers to work alongside the established section / senior engineers on the site. They all had marvellous qualifications but precious little practical experience. Any of them could provide a structural design, but hadn't got the first idea of how to act as a site engineer, interpreting a completed design and setting it out on site for the construction crews (which is what they were employed to do). The contractor expected this, and so a certain amount of training / climbing of learning curves was built into the site organisation.

Possibly at the top levels of motorsport new recruits need to hit the ground running, because the company doesn't have the resources (in personnel or time) to continue broadening a graduate's experience. I can't offer an easy solution, I can only echo other's sentiments - get some experience (any experience) and try again at a later date.

[CFD Dude]

In terms of F1, except for certain positions I don't think they are looking for people with motorsports interest/experience anymore. They want people who are experts in their field, be it aerodynamics, composites, electronics, dynamics, etc. They'd rather hire someone who was working as an aerodynamicist on aircraft working with small changes and refinements in a design than someone who knows a little areo and once designed a rear wing for his buddies club racer. For electorinics a person designing cellular phones is more desirable than someone who knows how to use the pi system on his shifter kart. These people from outside of motorsports a) are going to be up to speed on the latest technology and b) aren't going to be upset working away in the office and never seeing the car on the track.

For those few position they need 'racers' for they're looking to hire someone with 5 years of race engineering experience in F3000 or sportscars. Someone they have to invest nearly zero training in.

As for how to get in? I'm not really sure. When I first got out of grad school I applied to a bunch of race teams and chassis designers and I got a little interest from Reynard (which never went anywhere, but that was probably for the best considering they went belly up six months later) and that was it. Right now I'm making more money not working in racing and I help out my friends with their track cars, shifter karts, etc. It's an arrangement that works for me for now.

I've got a friend who wasn't going to accept a job that wasn't involving motorsports or high performance road cars, after looking for nearly a year (I tell you, he must have the most understanding parents in the world. Mine never would have standed for that) he discovered that he was unhirable. There was another group of graduates now who had the same experience as him, but didn't have to explain what they did for the last year. He's taken some courses since then trying to update his skills, but it's been hard.

My advice would be if you can't find a motorsport job in a reasonable amount of time find a job where you can learn a special skillset that could be beneficial if you decide to try to follow that career path again in the future.

[Greg Locock]

Desmo - a couple of things

1) without the piece of paper you won't even get into most car companies, so you won't get the experience, so you won't get the decent jobs. This makes it the most important piece of paper you will ever have.

2) I have worked for four years with engineering students on a solar car project and I think I can safely say that NONE of the work they did came anywhere near the contributions made by the working engineers in terms of innovation, understanding of the fundamentals, and usefulness. Kids straight out of uni need a couple of years of real work under their belt before they can consistently pull their weight in an engineering environment, in my opinion.

[desmo]

Well obviously a degree is necessary but not sufficient. Without a degree you'll never get hired; with a degree you'll probably never get hired. Corollary: Without a job, you'll never get experience; without experience you'll never get a job. Can you say, "Would you like fries with that?" Seriously, judging by the admittedly relatively scant anecdotal experiences of engineering students on this board, there appears to be a marked oversupply of engineering degree holders in the automotive field.

You're not the first one I've heard note how relatively useless engineering students are fresh out of school! If engineering though resembles other fields, some small percentage of these young engineers fresh from school will be brilliant if raw I expect having far greater upside potential than an average competant journeyman engineer with ten years of experience, even if the journeyman engineer can integrate and become productive sooner and is thus a "safer" choice. Perhaps production car makers or even F1 teams are simply too large organizationally to really take advantage of a brilliant or innovative thinker. An able, methodical plodder might be a better organizational fit. The companies, at least in motorsport, that can discern who these brilliant young people are, get them on board and groom them might well be ahead of the game longer-term still I reckon.

[zac510]

Does mechanical (hands on) aptitude count at all?

[Deepak]

I am rocking in the same boat too.

I have a degree in mech engg and was about to pursue a masters in USA ( i am from india) but i wanted to just get into anything automotive related and i am most interested in aero but i have read lots of books on engines, dynamics, suspension and transmission. Lots of people though adviced me to get hands on experience before getting to another degree.

I am following the advice much againt what my heart says and everytime i look at the engineers working on a car in formula one i am envious but i know i have to be patient. I am young (23) but the problem has been finding any job to do anything with mechanical forget automotive. all the time i only get calls asking me if i know php, java, C etc which i am least interested in and have no aptitude for since i barely used to understand prgramming.

Yes, i wish my parents were a bit more understanding too. they just keep forcing me to take any god damn job. which i wont and i stick by it. right now i got some leads to work on engines. let me see.

any advice for people like me?

[remmosffej]

Originally posted by desmo
Seriously, judging by the admittedly relatively scant anecdotal experiences of engineering students on this board, there appears to be a marked oversupply of engineering degree holders in the automotive field.

There's an oversupply in every field, but especially aerospace and automotive. I finished my undergrad degee in 2001, the bottom of the recession. There weren't, and still aren't, many entry level job openings. There was, and still are, enough people with some experience who were downsized snapping up all those entry level jobs. I looked for about 6 months and decided to go back to school. It's more than anecdotal too - quite a few people in my program are here for the same reasons I am.

Quarterly profits and the stock market are back up, but companies aren't hiring more people. Many R&D and design jobs are going overseas now too. An aerospace guy came to my school to give a talk and one of his points was that the aerospace workforce is aging but they are not bringing in enough new talent as replacements. According to him this is an acknowledged problem, but the companies are not doing anything about it, sacrificing long term on-shore capability for short-term profits. The best bet for a US citizen is going to be something DoD related. DoD and Homeland security are big spenders in research now too (mine included).

[Greg Locock]

You 'just' have to get in on the internship type programs. Our graduate intake (for a production car company) is something like 90% from local (within 1000 km) universities. We work with them, we know them, we help with their courses and project work, we take the students as interns, and we interview them for the graduate program. People who don't get in via the grad program (which, frankly, is aimed at producing managers more than engineers) but who have impressed the engineers during their internships often get contract jobs, which typically turn permanent after one or two years. We don't have a formal, technical stream, graduate program.

To put this into perspective we probably have 40 new grads per year in the graduate program, perhaps 100 in the intern program (not too sure of numbers there), but are looking for 200 engineers growth over the next two years. We are recruiting internationally, but can afford to pick and choose. We don't choose to train newbies up for those jobs, we need people who can hit the ground running.

I know this is not great news for you guys, all I can say is we also steal people from our suppliers, they are probably a bit easier to get into. Also if your technical abilities are good you may find it easier to get in as a contractor as an (FEA) analyst or whatever, rather than as an engineer.

I'd add that I have been gently hankering after the job I do now for 15 years before I got it - you really do have to plan in the long term sometimes!

[zfh10]

Originally posted by richdubbya
You need to make a list of all the different forms of motorsports, with the highest level at the top and in decending order. Go down the list until you come to the spot where you are not just qualified but well qualified, over qualified. You start there working for free, you become the best at that level and and get to know everyone on the best teams at that level, and you work your way up, one level at a time.

that's what I would do. Find your 'level' - and excel at it. Move up the chain. It will take time, but you can get there.
Good luck!

[confucius]

I remember seeing a few ads for mechanics/engineers etc to work for one of the top V8 Supercar teams here in Australia (in case you don't know, V8Supercars are probably considered to be the premier racing category in Australia). The ads stressed quite explicitly that all applicants needed substantial experience in either high-end supercars, or experience in top-level motor racing.

If that's the case here, I can't even imagine the talent/experience/skill/education levels required to get close to working in F1.

[Patrice L'Rodent]

Quote Greg,
"Kids straight out of uni need a couple of years of real work under their belt before they can consistently pull their weight in an engineering environment, in my opinion."

Greg, I couldn't agree more. In my involvement with FSAE, I have placed many young hopefuls in good motorsport jobs, but always they tell me that when they hire a graduate engineer, all you get is a highly qualified technical clerk, and you then spend two years making an engineer!

FSAE experience, especially in a 'good' team is invaluable.

Pat

[Superliner II]

Last year one graduate from the Motorsport Engineering Degree at Swansea Institute got a job at BAR as a junior aerodynamicist. Her final year project was CFD related. She got a first class degree and the work she done on CFD was said by the external examiner to be closer to PHD level .

What I took from that was if you want to be in with a chance to get in at the top level you need to specialise in what the teams consider most important. In F1 at the moment that seems to be aerodynamics.

[Lukin]

I agree with Pat in regards to a highly qualified technical clerk. Im fourth year Mech Eng and we dont know that much in terms of practical applications. Its takes a while to gain that. Its not that we dont know it, it's just experienced engineers know what works and, more importantly whats practical.

I understand your frustration jvl. I applied for the Ford graduate program for 2005 and didnt make it past the first round. I honestly don't know what they want. Im not a genuis but I average 74-75% (will get second class honours), I'm working on the SAE team for this year, done a vacation program in mining and currently work there part time during my final year. I do student mentoring for new uni students and other uni related crap and I didnt even get a bloody call back for an interview! Im still a bit pissed off actually, had saved money to fly and stay in Melbourne.

Anyone got any tips? I do wish I had gone to Claude Roulle, I'll just have to make sure I do a good job with SAE this year and try make a good impression at the competition. Just gonna keep applying for other jobs in non-automotive fields to try get some general engineering experience.

Good luck jvl.

[Greg Locock]

Lukin

Without giving too much away, read the note I wrote. Are you a manager wannabee? Or a real engineer? "They" aren't really looking for engineers, on the grad program. Second class honours is not going to impress anyone who worries about things like that (That's what I have BTW) - your big problem is that mining !=automotive. I would hope our recruiters take notice of FSAE... but would not hold my breath.

By the way, Kinetik over in WA are advertising at the moment. They have their heads screwed on.

I may seem a bit down on the racers here, I'm not. The guys who have real karting and rallying experience really shine when it comes to vehicle development , in some respects, but the hardest thing in the world is to switch out of 'racer' mode and to start to consider the balance of the attributes required by the customer. My old field was noise and vibration - we'd see much the same there - a tendency to pursue some slight gain at the expense of all the other attributes of the car.

[Lukin]

Greg,
I do understand where your coming from in regard to the manager/technical side of engineering, at the moment I'd rather do some proper engineering, if thats what they call it. I guess I need to get some technical design skills (Like you said, FEA) in another industry (suppliers perhaps) and then try move across into the automotive field. The mining thing is just some experience, any experience really. May I ask what manufacturer you are with?

[Keith Young]

Like it has been said here many times, once cannot get into racing because they know the ins and outs of the cars. I dream of designing F1 or LMP900 etc. I have no parents, so going to college now is somewhat impossible, with the higher tuition and lower financial aid. I realised in highschool that I would need to pick a specific skill, and I chose CAE, mainly CAD. I won a contest in CAD in highschool, and got 2 job offers right after that. One was for a company using UG, and could deliver GM compliant data, so I took that one. It is incredibly hard to get these jobs without experience, so when you get a job like this STAY THERE!!!! I got laid off from this cad job, though I work for them when they have emergencies. Now I am looking for jobs doing CAD work designing Tool and Die. Many companies like to hear you have tool and die experience, and so even though tool and die is not related AT ALL to modern racecars, it can get me higher CAD positions which IS related. I am an exception to a rule, you almost always need a BS to get a job like I have, the only reason I have a chance at getting new design positions is because of my 2 years of top end CAD work with very good reviews. Even with my skill level, I was still very lucky to get such jobs without college, and my lack of a BS will continue to handicap me untill I finally go into debt and die of ramen consumption for school.

Also, dont stress too much about starting right off in a good job. When I got laid off from my white collar top end cad job, I went straight to a factory where they treat employees like **** and everyone is low income low class. I was exposed to Nitric Acid fumes and could have died but they didnt care. But this is the thing you very likely will have to do in order to make ens meat untill you finally find your dream job. ITS NOT EASY!!! You need to realise its hard for everyone, even me.

[confucius]

Originally posted by Lukin
I understand your frustration jvl. I applied for the Ford graduate program for 2005 and didnt make it past the first round. I honestly don't know what they want. Im not a genuis but I average 74-75% (will get second class honours), I'm working on the SAE team for this year, done a vacation program in mining and currently work there part time during my final year. I do student mentoring for new uni students and other uni related crap and I didnt even get a bloody call back for an interview! Im still a bit pissed off actually, had saved money to fly and stay in Melbourne.

I applied for the 2005 Ford Grad program too, although in Marketing and not in tech-related field. Did they get back to you already? I haven't heard anything from them yet. I have an insider who works at Ford and he has said he'll try and find out the progress for me.

It is actually quite hard to find out what employers want nowadays. My brother graduated with a double degree in Sci/Eng with Honours, averaged H1s (High Distinctions) throughout all 5 years, and had about 7yrs of work experience yet he got SO many rejections before finally landing a grad job at Telstra.

I'm finding it bloody tough right now too. The job market for grads is just absolutely hopeless. I should've done accounting or finance

[dosco]

Most of what I say will be rehash....but.....(and some of this will sound harsh - but you have to understand the perspective of those in 'the field')

Originally posted by jvl
I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering with first class honours, I have worked on Formula Fords and Formula SAE, so I have pratical racing experience. I have taken a 10 day course on Catia, which cost me $5000 and I have some experience with Fluent, Ansys C++ and Visual Basic.

Yeah, you and about 250,000 other people on the planet.

1. People who graduate "with first class honors" are 99% of the time book smart but cannot apply their knowledge in the "real world" and are mechanically inept.

2. Working on FF and FSAE doesn't mean diddly to and F1 team, or LMP team. Although a great way to get some experience, and become more interested in engineering, an FSAE car only will get you very basic knowledge about racecars.

3. 10 days in CATIA? You're at best, a rank beginner. Why would an F1 company, full of guys with years of CATIA experience, want to hire a rank beginner? Why would they hire a beginner, with plenty of out-of-work engineers (who know CATIA) from other industries floating around?

4. 'Some' experience with ANSYS, C++, and visual basic? See #3 above.

Originally posted by jvl
I'm wondering if I should rethink my direction in my engineering career becasue motorsport has only brought me trouble and heartbreak.

You should make a plan. There is no way you're going to get hired into an F1 team straight out of college - unless you're:

1. A prodigy.
2. Were an F1 mechnic for years before your degree
3. Are connected (to desmo's mention of "old boy network")

Even if you were one of the above, your chances would probably be slim.

Generate a plan like this:

1. layout what you need to know to be an F1 engineer.
2. devise an employment strategy that will get you into jobs that will get you the knowledge you need.
3. get the job.....get the skills....change jobs, if necessary, to continue developing the skills you need.
4. Get a job in an ancillary field (like a supplier to an F1 team). Develop contacts in the F1 community.

5. Remain patient.

Here's the deal - you goto college and dream about what you're going to do. Hell, I wanted to be an aircraft designer - the aircraft building market crapped out in the late 1980s....all that's really left are Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed...which isn't much. And even if I did have a job with one of those companies, I'd probably have a job (and spend years and years) designing landing gear fasteners, as part of a team of 100 other landing gear fastener engineers. There aren't that many airplane design jobs around......so I work in a company that makes airplane parts. I didn't give up.

And even that was a journey - the USAF paid for part of my degree - so I did 4.5 years on active duty. What did I learn: leadership, management, people, airplane tech. And I made some industry contacts.

Then I took a job with AlliedSignal (in Phoenix) as a purchasing agent. I had hoped to get into their engineering department designing engines/APUs. I had bad timing, and was not able to get a job in their engineering department. What did I learn: purchasing, contracting, pricing, business models, manufacturing techniques, database management, supplier base. And I made contacts in the industry.

So I took an engineering position with one of their suppliers. I now work as an engineer (finally finally finally). And I really enjoy my work.

There are so many things you can do in engineering - don't limit yourself. And make a plan to get yourself to where you want to be. And don't be afraid or upset if you have to do other things along the way - it can only help you.

[wherezmyz]

This thread has brought out one issue that still hasn't been seriously addressed as far as undergraduate level engineering programs (in the U.S.) are concerned: there is a serious lack of application of theory to real world problems. Students should be exposed to more than just the rote mechanics of plug and chug formula crunching as soon as possible in the educational progression. I have talked to many discouraged students who have gone through two semesters of calculus without being informed of any of the practical applications in their fields. This is just plain wrong. Once they are shown what the tools are used for, you can instantly see a change in their attitudes. If students were truly exposed to real world problems and problem solving techniques right from the start, there might be a change in the need for long orientation periods for them to "be of any use." Maybe the problem is partly due to courses being taught by people who have never had any industry experience themselves. Theory is great, but the balance of trying to put that knowledge to practical use adds a valuable element to the learning experience that shouldn't be ignored at the undergraduate level. Programs like FSAE are definitely worthwhile, and I am encouraged to hear about manufacturers becoming more involved in developing academic curriculums, but engineering education as a whole needs to be revamped. Why should someone who has just spent 4(+) years in an educational system that is supposedly geared towards the needs of their chosen field, be useful for nothing much more than a "technical clerk" when they are done? Steps need to be taken to bridge the gap between the "this is what Professor X wants us to know" and the shocking reality of "you didn't learn 1% of what you really need to know to do well in industry." Addressing this issue seems like it would benefit students, industry and academia alike. Any ideas out there?

[dbalban]

Originally posted by dosco

1. People who graduate "with first class honors" are 99% of the time book smart but cannot apply their knowledge in the "real world" and are mechanically inept.

2. Working on FF and FSAE doesn't mean diddly to and F1 team, or LMP team. Although a great way to get some experience, and become more interested in engineering, an FSAE car only will get you very basic knowledge about racecars.

3. 10 days in CATIA? You're at best, a rank beginner. Why would an F1 company, full of guys with years of CATIA experience, want to hire a rank beginner? Why would they hire a beginner, with plenty of out-of-work engineers (who know CATIA) from other industries floating around?

4. 'Some' experience with ANSYS, C++, and visual basic? See #3 above.



You should make a plan. There is no way you're going to get hired into an F1 team straight out of college - unless you're:

1. A prodigy.
2. Were an F1 mechnic for years before your degree
3. Are connected (to desmo's mention of "old boy network")

Even if you were one of the above, your chances would probably be slim.

Generate a plan like this:

1. layout what you need to know to be an F1 engineer.
2. devise an employment strategy that will get you into jobs that will get you the knowledge you need.
3. get the job.....get the skills....change jobs, if necessary, to continue developing the skills you need.
4. Get a job in an ancillary field (like a supplier to an F1 team). Develop contacts in the F1 community.

5. Remain patient.

1. I agree with all that was said here. I know from seeing what first class graduates have done since leaving university that they lack common sense in an engineering way. They are great at number cruching and analysing but a lot of that could be related back to a simple knowledge and understanding with added common sense!

2. FSAE - lol, when I was working with a world rally team they refered to Formula Student (FSAE) as those little phut phut cars that look like shoes. No they don't take them seriously. They do however take the practical and conceptual design aspect of it on board. Having said that its not a bad thing to put on your CV by a long way. It shows that you have a basic grasp of what is involved in grass routes motorsport and that can only be taken as a positive. The same thing applies to FFord however with FFord it does depend more on what you did there. I mean you can say that you have FFord experience and in reality all you did was change tyres. The key is to be specific with your qualifications without being drawn out. For example: A year's expericence with a FFord engineering design department, this is all thats needed to draw attention to the fact that you have worked in motorsport but also that it was with the design department.

3. 10 days in CATIA is nothing I'm affraid. Again during my period with a world rally team I was trained the basics in Pro Engineer 2001. I was given the opportunity to do two courses whilst I was there. 7 days on basic training and 3 days on sheet metal work. This is no where near the experience you would need to become a drawing office skivvy. I was with the team for a whole year and up until the very last day I was still asking very basic Pro E questions. 10 days is nothing. 6 months is nothing substantial. A year is closer to what you need to be looking at. I am lucky to be able to say that I now have over a years experience with Pro Engineer and also have course certification to back it up.

Unfortunately for you you are looking for jobs in an industry where there aren't many and if there are jobs then there are 1000's of more experienced people out there. Do not loose heart however since I have applied to each and every F1 team out there and all their replies came back as "sorry, we are not looking at taking more people on at the moment..." As has been said previously in this thread I think that F1 is a big stepping stone away from having a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Its very hard and only the very very skilled and talented jump straight from university to F1 without any previous experience in the category. I would hazzard a guess that this is a one in a million chance! Set your goals a little lower. More importantly do not give up. There will be opportunities. Many of my friends have offered to work for World Championship teams as work experience and unpaid work. This is a way of getting a foot in the door. Sure you will be living like a student again but its all in the quest to living your dream.

Good luck and I hope to see you walking up and down that pitlane some day. Make sure you have an AtlasF1 logo embroidered somewhere so we can all spot you and say "see I knew he could do it"

[dosco]

Originally posted by dbalban

3. 10 days in CATIA is nothing I'm affraid. Again during my period with a world rally team I was trained the basics in Pro Engineer 2001. I was given the opportunity to do two courses whilst I was there. 7 days on basic training and 3 days on sheet metal work. This is no where near the experience you would need to become a drawing office skivvy. I was with the team for a whole year and up until the very last day I was still asking very basic Pro E questions. 10 days is nothing. 6 months is nothing substantial. A year is closer to what you need to be looking at. I am lucky to be able to say that I now have over a years experience with Pro Engineer and also have course certification to back it up.

I use ProE as well.

How did you like the Sheetmetal module?

[dosco]

Originally posted by wherezmyz
This thread has brought out one issue that still hasn't been seriously addressed as far as undergraduate level engineering programs (in the U.S.) are concerned: there is a serious lack of application of theory to real world problems.

Damn straight.

Good luck changing things, though.

Professors (generally) don't give a damn about:

1. teaching critical thinking skills
2. relating how theory relates to reality
3. a kid's mechanical aptitude

Industry doesn't care about sinking money into training people. I know. When I was in the USAF, I got buku training. Trained until my head hurt and I couldn't stand it anymore. When I arrived for my first day at AlliedSignal, the boss says, "here's your chair, desk, and computer. start buying." And walked away. I had never been a buyer before. I worked there for 3 years and never got any "company sanctioned" training.

Private industry cannot correlate training to their bottom line - therefore they see it as an expense, and normally will not invest in it. You will see some hodge-podge of "volunteering" and "community service" or whatever type tax-deductible stuff, but they're not serious at all about it.

Unfortunately, it is sink or swim.....and one has to be particularly self-motivated to make it through the curriculum (which I see as mostly hazing).

Go to the next lower level - high school. All they care about (now) is teaching to some BS test so the school will get its money.

I'm afraid education these days is much like health care - you have to be your own best advocate to get what you need.

[CFD Dude]

dosco, a agree with some of what you say, but I think you're being a little overly cynical. Engineering course don't teach a lot of hands on practical work, and they could probably use a little more, but at the same time you can't make it 100% practical work or you end up training technicians instead of engineers. Engineers are problem solvers, and the approach to teaching them in school seems to be to overload them with course work and see how they cope. It's painful, but you if you manage to graduate you've adapted to learn a lot of information in a very short period of time. That's what'll get you by when you get into industry. The schools can't teach you exactly what you're going to be doing in industry because they don't know. Out of the 200 or so engineers I graduated with, there are probably have 150 unique jobs that they do. You can't prepare all of those students individually for the career they'll have later in life.

As for companies not doing any training, I hear you there. I'm on my third job after graduating from school now and I've had exactly zero days of orientation out of all three jobs. Companies now days are operating on such tight profit margins that they can't afford to spend time or money on training. The other factor is the high rate of unemployment for engineers right now. You don't have to train new graduates when you can find experienced engineers to fill the needs of your company. Before the likes of GM, Ford, Boeing, Nortel, etc started laying off engineers by the thousands companies needed to hire new graduates because they couldn't find experienced engineers, or if they could they had to pay out large salaries or bonuses to lure them away from other companies. It's a hard market out there right now. It'll get better in time, but I'm glad I've got a job right now. There are a lot of good experienced engineers that I know that are out of work at the moment.

When it comes to F1, there are refugees from Prost, Arrows, Asiatech, Reynard, etc right now that would like to get back into racing, which makes it hard if you haven't been in the industry in the past.

[Greg Locock]

The problem with degrees seeming irrelevant to the students is a big issue, partly resolved by FSAE.

I was very fortunate in that I landed a 'thick sandwich' scholarship, which gave me a year in industry, followed by three years at uni, with some more work in the long vacations, and a year after uni to finish my training off.

This meant when I was bored out of my brain in lectures on the phase diagram for steel, I at least knew that it tied directly back to my work the previous summer analysing the metallurgy of gear teeth in a lab.

This is why the Australian approach of using the third year of uni for internships is wrong - the first two years of uni have been used as an extension of school. I knew from the first day I walked into a lecture theatre that EVERYTHING I heard might be useful to me, one day. Even the electronics.

Having had a go at the internship program, the argument in favour of it is that for the employer it makes more sense. The kids have done two years of their engineering degree, so they are technically able, for instance one of our interns at the ride and handling lab was running a Vehdyna (sp?) model of the car used for ride tuning. He then went out on the road and collected real data for correlation. This is excellent work. He needed the maths he'd picked up at uni to do it.

[wherezmyz]

Originally posted by CFD Dude
...Engineering course don't teach a lot of hands on practical work, and they could probably use a little more, but at the same time you can't make it 100% practical work or you end up training technicians instead of engineers...

The problem is that it is now almost too hands off in many colleges. Labs are not even entered into until the junior year, in some cases. Maybe new graduates could make positive contributions more quickly if they had more practical experience as part of their course work. I remember a discussion with a professor realting to this exact issue about the use of different types of capacitors in various circuit designs. "We don't teach you that because we think it would be beneath you. That's technician work..." Well excuse me, but I think I need to know what types of components work best in different applications. His idea that something like that would not need to be considered at an engineering level was bad enough, but the fact that he refused to even mention it in passing in further lectures finally opened my eyes to the serious gap between the theoretical and practical in education.

...Engineers are problem solvers, and the approach to teaching them in school seems to be to overload them with course work and see how they cope. It's painful, but you if you manage to graduate you've adapted to learn a lot of information in a very short period of time. That's what'll get you by when you get into industry...

Overloading is fine, but hopefully the course work is more than just the usual rote memorization and simple mechanics of formula derivation and manipulation. A good portion of the posts in this thread so far seem to indicate that either the information being "learned" is either far too basic, or not being explained in a useful manner. Memorizing does not always equate to understanding. Student engineers need to be exposed to more real world problems. Even if they don't understand all the nuances of an issue at first, waiting until the graduate level to present complex problems is a big mistake.

...The schools can't teach you exactly what you're going to be doing in industry because they don't know. Out of the 200 or so engineers I graduated with, there are probably have 150 unique jobs that they do. You can't prepare all of those students individually for the career they'll have later in life.

The problem is that too many schools aren't even trying to find out what is necessary and continue to carry on with thirty year old curriculums. In the ten years that I have been with my present employer, not once have any of the engineers been asked to give a short presentation to any of the local high schools or colleges, let alone be requested to give any input on curriculum issues. This, in an area of the state where the company is the only major manufacturer left , but there are numerous vocational/technical and engineering colleges.

...As for companies not doing any training, I hear you there. I'm on my third job after graduating from school now and I've had exactly zero days of orientation out of all three jobs. Companies now days are operating on such tight profit margins that they can't afford to spend time or money on training...

Trial by fire isn't a bad thing, but if companies are too short sighted to see the value of highly trained and motivated employees, then the problem is worse than we all think.

[dosco]

Originally posted by CFD Dude
dosco, a agree with some of what you say, but I think you're being a little overly cynical. Engineering course don't teach a lot of hands on practical work, and they could probably use a little more, but at the same time you can't make it 100% practical work or you end up training technicians instead of engineers. Engineers are problem solvers, and the approach to teaching them in school seems to be to overload them with course work and see how they cope. It's painful, but you if you manage to graduate you've adapted to learn a lot of information in a very short period of time. That's what'll get you by when you get into industry. The schools can't teach you exactly what you're going to be doing in industry because they don't know. Out of the 200 or so engineers I graduated with, there are probably have 150 unique jobs that they do. You can't prepare all of those students individually for the career they'll have later in life.

I can appreciate where you're coming from, but there are problems with your reasoning.

1. Engineers need to know how to make things. They need to understand machining processes, welding processes, etc. If these skills are "too dumb" for professors to teach, well, they're elitist arseholes. Why does an engineer need to know this stuff?

a. So they don't come off as elitist arseholes with the guys who make the parts (I've seen this).
b. So they know approximately how long it will take to make a part.
c. So they know if the machininst is BSing them about something.
d. So they don't design something that cannot be manufactured.
e. So they know what is really going on if they want to be in management.

(plenty of kids come out of high school not knowing how to make things, because it seems hobbies these days are confined to surfing the internet and video games - kids today (seem to) have jack for mechanical aptitude).

2. Engineers need to have critical thinking skills. Such skills are not taught in high school, nor are they taught in college. Basically you get a bunch of automatons that will (someday, hopefully) figure out how to think for themselves. There's one person I work with.....if the answer isn't in a book, this person is lost. Ridiculous.

3. College isn't about learning - which pisses me off. I never understood calculus until I failed Calc 3 and took it at a state school over the summer. At my school, the math was: "do this stuff the way I show you." No relation to the real world. No alternate explanantions for those who don't understand. It sucked.

I support things like FSAE (even though it may not have sounded that way in my posts). I was involved in a Human Powered Helicopter project (Kremer prize) - but it was all student driven - the profs didn't care.

Also - profs pretty much care about generating papers/studies so they can generate revenue for their schools. Once tenured, even crappy profs are safe. There is no motivation for schools to actually educate anybody......

If that makes me cynical - whatever. I like to think of myself as a realist.

[kart_26]

Hi!

I too am going to finish my mech engg. degree in afew months from now. There is absolutely no scope for fresh engineers out here. All that we manage to learn in 4 years here is "How to memorise things and put them on paper as neatly as possible." Some of the companies stupidly ask for academics and get the textbookworms to write aptitude tests in which they fare very poorly.
In this country, US education is highly thought of because of the extremely low standards here.
Students who graduate from our college a year before us become the faculty thus continiuing the downhill road to destruction of practical thinking. New ideas and creativity are not at all welcome and students who are creative suffer because of the education system. After 4 years of engg., all they can do is memorise things and repeat it like a parrot. In the Us atleast you may have qualified professors teaching, but the faculty in most colleges here are people with a fake degree. The lecturer who (supposedly) taught us AutoCAD didn't know evena single comand and worst of all he didn't know how to switch on a computer!!!!!
With this kind of engg. to boot I don't think people from cities like ours(Hyderabad) have no chance to make it to the top anyday. It might as well remain a dream. You would hardly find any encouragement for motorsport in colleges or industries here. If anybody wishes to do some real engg. he has to get out of this country to do it. This is because most of the engg. graduates are now employed in Call Centres where they obviously don't do any real engg.


Karthik

[CFD Dude]

2. Engineers need to have critical thinking skills. Such skills are not taught in high school, nor are they taught in college. Basically you get a bunch of automatons that will (someday, hopefully) figure out how to think for themselves. There's one person I work with.....if the answer isn't in a book, this person is lost. Ridiculous.

3. College isn't about learning - which pisses me off. I never understood calculus until I failed Calc 3 and took it at a state school over the summer. At my school, the math was: "do this stuff the way I show you." No relation to the real world. No alternate explanantions for those who don't understand. It sucked.

Well, I can't speak for the school you went to, but I always thought that these two are the things one learned in engineering courses. Most engineers I know say that what going through an engineering degree program teaches you is how to learn quickly and how to be a problem solver. Those are the skills that make new graduates desirable in the workforce and why the majority of engineers find jobs after graduating. The specifics on how to fill out TPS forms, or the nuances of sheet metal pressing or whatever else you need in your job you'll pick up with experience.

Having said that, YES, I THINK THAT ENGINEERS COULD USE SOME MORE TECHNICAL TRAINING IN SCHOOL, but I think going as far to claim that an engineering degree is irrelevant isn't valid.

Now, wasn't this thread about trying to get into motorsports rather than the criculum of post secondary engineering degrees?

[McGuire]

The engineering diploma is to engineering as the fishing license is to fishing.

[CFD Dude]

The engineering diploma is to engineering as the fishing license is to fishing.

I've got to remember that one!

[Ben]

Originally posted by jvl
Well I have been trying for 3 years now and no luck at all.

I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering with first class honours, I have worked on Formula Fords and Formula SAE, so I have pratical racing experience. I have taken a 10 day course on Catia, which cost me $5000 and I have some experience with Fluent, Ansys C++ and Visual Basic.

But with no luck at all. Everyone who I send a letter out get rejected. I fyour wondering I have applied to F1 teams to chassis manufacturers and even to lowly supercars team.

I'm wondering if I should rethink my direction in my engineering career becasue motorsport has only brought me trouble and heartbreak.

What do you think guys.

As others have mentioned, your experience is nothing special relative to all the other grad engineers out there. Understanding a CAD package is one thing, using it to design parts from scratch is quite another, a 10 day CATIA course mean you know where some of the buttons are. I been using CATIA V5R8-12 weekly for the past 2 years on FStudent but I do not consider myself an industry standard CAD engineer.

In short, the motorsport market is consolidating and as a result there are large numbers of people with lots of motorsport experience out of work. If its a choice between you and one of them they will win.

Get some proper engineering experience and then apply when you have more than your undergrad CV to offer. I have had to make this decision and will most likely be back in the aerospace industry when I graduate this summer.

Ben

[PLAYLIFE]

I graduated last year with a double degree in aerospace engineering and applied science in aviation. I'm currently doing some work experience with Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart doing CFD and have previous primitive mech engineering experience at Ford. Fortunately I have a few contacts in some high places but even still I know it's useless to even bother considering any fantastic position anytime soon. So I've done basically what some of you on here have mentioned, and that is to build up my knowledge in specific areas so I can apply for a highly desired position of mine further down the track. I realise in myself that I lack the experience required and am working on getting that first as I know I'm not anything of a prodigy.

A lot of my friends have been applying to V8 Supercar teams but of course they keep getting knocked back; I've tried telling them my point of view but they disagree, each to their own. I just find a lot of people wish to get places too quickly; it's nice to dream about it but you have to be realistic.

Slightly OT, a friend of mine has been successful with the Ford graduate program and is one of the last 30 of the 6000 odd applicants (or whatever the number was).

[McGuire]

Originally posted by jvl
Well I have been trying for 3 years now and no luck at all.

I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering with first class honours, I have worked on Formula Fords and Formula SAE, so I have pratical racing experience. I have taken a 10 day course on Catia, which cost me $5000 and I have some experience with Fluent, Ansys C++ and Visual Basic.

But with no luck at all. Everyone who I send a letter out get rejected. I fyour wondering I have applied to F1 teams to chassis manufacturers and even to lowly supercars team.

I'm wondering if I should rethink my direction in my engineering career becasue motorsport has only brought me trouble and heartbreak.

What do you think guys.

Question: Are you a recently-graduated engineer who thinks racing would be an interesting field? Or did you obtain an engineering degree to enable or advance a career in racing?

[Monstrobolaxa]

Well...I'm an aeronautical engineering student....I also wish to get into Formula 1....but I know that probably I'll never reach it...but on the contrary (to some members here) I don't expect to reach F1 in the first 10 years after I finish my degree! I might not even reach it! At least I'm lucky cause here in Portugal only my university has Aeronautical Engineering and everyone that has finished the degree has got a job in some kind of engineering related firm.....we even have newly formed engineers from our univer. that are working at Airbus and Rolls royce.....the other are working in Portuguese airliners.

But my path I want would be something like:

- finishing the degree;
- working 2/3 years in whatever I can get a job in.... to save some money for a Masters (Carnfield if possible);
- PhD.......it's possible if a vacancy for a area of my liking opens up;
- then depending on if I find a nice job or not.....I might just try getting into f.Ford or F.Palmer Audi as a trainee Mechanic...then try to grow inside the sport.

Maybe when I'm 30 or 35 I might get into F1.....it doesn't mean that I will.....alot of people what to get into F1 directly and don't take no for an answer....but in life you get more no's then yeses.....so you always have to have a backup plan. For me getting into F1 is a dream....I'll work for it but if I don't make it....tough luck...I did my best and other things in life can make me happy....

[senna da silva]

Find out who works in F1

[golfball]

There's no guaranteed way to do it but you need a good degree from probably Cambridge, Southampton, Cranfield or Imperial College and then you need a really hefty slice of luck.

You need to send your CV off to as many teams as you can and then just trust in blind luck that you CV stands out AND they're looking for an entry level person. Bear in mind that in aerodynamics for example, each team has maybe 10 aerodynamicists and there are 10 teams. That's only 100 people IN THE WORLD who are doing the job you want to do - maybe 15-20 at entry level. With money being tight right now and with refugees from Arrows, Prost and Reynard floating around (not to mention axed people from Jordan, etc) there aren't that many of them leaving or moving around.

Unfortunately, one "on-the-job" training route into motorsport has gone now - Reynard used to do a slave labour graduate trainee scheme that a lot of F1 people went through - I don't know of any other similar scheme.

Sorry to be so negative but don't waste your life waiting around for the phone to ring.

[Monstrobolaxa]

Exactly.....try growing in the sport....working for a supplier.....or another area....one day you might have a good enough CV to stand out from the crowd....at least that is what I want to do.....there are no easy jobs in F1. I've also heard that it doesn't have a fantastic working enviorment due to the competition that come up from inside the department you're working in....it's a tough sport and besides that if you plan to raise a family it isn't very easy.....with the long nights! and if you are lucky to be an engineer on the test team or racing team....you'll never be at home!

[desmo]

One thing that I think deserves mentioning is that a lot of the critical engineering is outsourced, often to firms that you and I have probably never heard of, by people that who's names will never be published in any book on who works in F1. One engineer I've talked to does important engine development for one of the large entrants and his identity is absolutely unknown outside the small clique of insiders and in fact I've never once heard the firm he works for connected publically with F1. The secrecy is so pervasive that entire programs take place completely in the dark. Even comprehensively finding out who to direct enquiries to for prospective employment is well-nigh an impossibility.

The teams themselves seem to be only the visible tip of a much larger, mostly invisible engineering "iceberg".

[Ned]

I am a ME student dreaming of getting into F1, too...but I bet there are millions of people with the same dream and all I can do is to get hook-ups and make myself really stand out....

If there are so many secret contractors, doesn't that mena people who does not necessarily like motorsports work on F1 stuff lots of the time?

[Deepak]

How much does and MS/ME or a PhD help?

Does it have much more value over real technical work exp. for say about 3-4 years?

Since i am at the crossroads between choosing a Masters or a tech job i would love to know this. And i made the decision to get into motorsports when i was around 16 years.

Now i am 23.

[Greg Locock]

Deepak

It does depend on your speciality. In my not very humble opinion there is little advantage in a mechanical engineer hanging around at uni in most industries. Apparently Australian industries agree with me, since the starting pay rates for mechies with masters and PhDs are lower than for those with just BScs.


Ned

you are stating the obvious. Does every dentist like teeth?

[Deepak]

Originally posted by Greg Locock
Deepak

It does depend on your speciality. In my not very humble opinion there is little advantage in a mechanical engineer hanging around at uni in most industries. Apparently Australian industries agree with me, since the starting pay rates for mechies with masters and PhDs are lower than for those with just BScs.


Ned

you are stating the obvious. Does every dentist like teeth?

Thanx Greg. I have also heard most number of senior engineers advice me the same and even some of the students from my batch right now pursuing a masters realise now that they end up getting the same jobs as a bachelors and in most cases not getting one at all.
I remember very well a case where one of my friends dad in the mech industry said that most CVs with a masters or above are rejected because they are over qualified or have no industry exp.

This is the reason why for the past year i have been in dilemma even though my job search has only a few months back landed me job as a software tester, though nothing related to my interest or field, i decided to take it to build contacts and some experience.

I just hope my patience pays of someday. If not formula1 i am hoping to atleast make it to some automotive company as a design guy especially in aero.

[Palle]

Originally posted by Ned
I am a ME student dreaming of getting into F1, too...but I bet there are millions of people with the same dream and all I can do is to get hook-ups and make myself really stand out....

If there are so many secret contractors, doesn't that mena people who does not necessarily like motorsports work on F1 stuff lots of the time?

But as already said in this thread. F1 teams are not after people with a specific motorsport interest. They need people who can deliver a job, that being an F1 fan or not.

However, to get a job in F1 is as much about who you know, as what you know.

I suppose a good way to start it will be to start hanging out on a local racetrack, speak to the people there. Get to know them and eventually work for a low ranking race team. They all know people higher up the ladder, and you will therefore gain access to these people as well. And they are all looking for people with racing experience from somewhere.

You could also try to take contact to one of the engineers from a F1 team. In my experience everybody seems keen to tell/help others, and explain what is needed and how they got there themselves.

[remmosffej]

In the US average starting salaries for MS and PhD are higher. Some job adverts will say either a few years experience or an advanced degree required. It depends on what you want to do. If you just want to design widgets or be a CAD jockey, then it isn't necessary. If you want to do research it helps. You get the chance to do more in-depth study in your concentration, and if you can get a good advisor and some relevant research you can crank out a nice thesis and get published in journals. Especially if you want to do something in aero, you get to dive into the fluids, do some computational work, write your own codes, etc. I'd bet that most aero guys in F1 have advanced degrees of some sort.