Passed PE (no experience). Employable?

[tete9000]

Hello.

I graduated engineering in 2014 outside the US. Mechatronics Engineering (major is Electrical and Computer). I had a 2-month internship in 2013 and that's the extent to my engineering experience.

I moved to the US shorty after. I accredited my degree, passed the FE exam, obtained my EIT certificate and recently passed the PE Mechanical Systems and Materials test. I have been doing food jobs during this period and still. I also tutored college-level subjects for a short while. I am in Texas. They now allow the partaking of the PE test before the experience requirement.

I also know SQL, few web frameworks (Rails, node.js and others), html...etc. Not at all bad at coding is what I am getting at.

Do I stand a chance at employment or an internship at least? Or should I not bother and just go get a master's degree that I don't need?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[jijir83]

The best way to find out if you're employable is by trying to get employed.

Part of it will be your expectation and aspiration for certain jobs. Without experience, you can't shoot blind and apply for everything under the sun and expect to find a match. The other part... I'm only guessing but do you have a green card/US citizenship or will you be needing visa or residency sponsorship? If you do, that will really be your other big hurdle, especially combined to no experience.

At point, you have nothing to lose. Make a list of companies, match up your skills, go on interviews and see what happens. If nothing pans out, you can always fall back on grad school. But, at least then, you would have learned what companies you're interested in are looking for and you can work on that while in grad school.

Good luck!

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[youngmotivatedengineer]

Based on your experience, the PE exam may not affect the outcome of you getting a job since you don't have any experience.  It shows that you want to become a PE, but without any engineering experience, you are basically at the same starting point as graduate who wants to get experience before applying for the exam.  You will still needed to get the required qualifying experience before they will issue you a PE license.  My suggestion would be to try to find a company that has a rotation program to give you exposure to different departments in the company as you seem to be interested in various areas (computer coding, Electrical/Computer engineering, Mechanical engineering). 

 

[Ken PE 3.1]

The two prior posts are about as good of advice as you are going to get.

You won't know if you are employable unless you try. Everything is based on the job market at the time.

When I started going to college, there appeared to be endless ads in the paper for engineering jobs. When I graduated, only a few. Things change all the time.

Best of luck in your search. I hope you land a great opportunity!