How long does it an electrical engineer graduate to land a job?

[andrewduong77]

I recently graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington with a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering. I graduated on Dec 19, 2015. I started applying for jobs since first week of January. I applied at Lockheed, AT&T, Burns & McDonnell, Oncor and many more large and small companies around my area Dallas-Fort Worth. I live in Irving, TX. I also applied for jobs all around the US as well. Up to this day I'm still unemployed due to frictional unemployment.

Most often it seems like most graduates who never had internships and/or work experience in their field or a related field will have difficulty finding entry-level jobs. Therefore I'm looking for jobs in other fields besides electrical engineering like IT, Cisco, Technician in where I could hold such position for a year and move up by experience.

I haven't received a call or offer for a job interview besides getting two emails from Family Heritage and a phone call requesting a job interview that I turned down from Dawkins Insurance Agency.

My dad works at AT&T. I did get emails requesting me take assessments (behavioral exams) and I didn't pass one, so I was disqualified for a wiring technicican position at AT&T. My uncle works at Boeing and he just submitted referral.

Being someone who's enthusiastic in radio and music programming, I also had applied for a couple of engineering positions at iHeartMedia and CBS Radio.

I did some research besides applying for jobs continuously, I found out most graduates don't get there first job between 3 to 9 months after graduation.

I'm worrying about it, but I tried to be patience. At the same time, my parents are so worried and they're super anxious about it as well. Any thoughts and suggestions on what I should think about, what I should do, and/or what I should look out for?

 

[umfan]

You have an in demand degree from an excellent university. Cast a wide net for available positions and it won't be long. You're six weeks into this and there is a lull before and after the holidays. You will have multiple offers soon.

You're already doing some sensible things, like leveraging your father and uncle to get referrals for their companies. You were overqualified for the tech position at AT&T. Consider looking for positions at usajobs.gov There are entry level positions within the Federal Government for engineers. Hopefully you're on LinkedIn, are making use of the placement assistance UT offers and are researching positions on a wide variety of sites.

Good luck!