Advice for job search for EE new grad in Austin

July 13, 2008 4:54 PM

Looking for advice on finding a job in Austin, TX for my boyfriend. He's a very-soon-to-be new grad with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering.

I'm not really sure where to begin looking. Everything I see on Monster or Dice or the like requires 5-10 years of specialized experience in the field. Any recommendations of other sites to try would be greatly appreciated.

I know there are lots of tech companies in town but I only know a few specific ones. Is there a good way to find a list? (I mean, besides looking at posted ads). My Google-fu is quite weak.

The only company I know of that has jobs posted for new grads is National Instruments, and he's definitely going to apply for those. Everything I have heard says that they are a great place to work.

I'm worried it will be an uphill battle trying to find a new grad position for a summer graduate. Would going with an employment agency be the most fruitful path here? And does anyone have any they would recommend?

He is graduating from UT-Arlington on August 9th, and will be in town twice before then so there is the potential to be available for interviews if we can get the ball rolling soon enough. His GPA is a bit above 3.2 for his coursework at UTA, and quite a bit higher if his junior college GPA is factored in. He's 28 and has experience working as a manager at a grocery store, if that means anything. He does not have any specific preferences for which area to go into - mainly he just wants to start building work experience and is quite flexible. However, programming is not something he likes or is particularly skilled in.

I'd be gratetful for any help / advice / etc. I worry if we can't find him a job here pretty quickly, he may have to look elsewhere and I fear for everything that would entail. (I cannot leave the Austin area because I am a non-custodial parent).

Thanks in advance for any help.

posted by marble to work & money (9 comments total)

IBM has a slew of jobs in Austin for EE's, many of which are available for new grads.
posted by comwiz at 5:01 PM on July 13, 2008

UTA should have a career center to help him look for a job. The UTSA career center helped me find my first job in Austin before I moved here from San Antonio.
posted by Daddy-O at 5:21 PM on July 13, 2008

High tech companies that I think (but am not positive) have EE jobs in town AMD, Dell, Freescale, TI, NI, Samsung, IBM, Applied Materials...anyway most major tech companies at least have sales offices here, many have technical folks as well.

AMD, Dell and others are hitting tough times, so jobs may be few. I know at my unnamed tech company listed above, hiring is frozen right now.

If he's a straight EE, and finding a job gets tough, I recco getting he gets project management certified (through PMI) or takes a few marketing courses. The jobs that are always open in my company are engineers that can be marketers or engineers than can project manage product development. Those two positions need someone who is not an engineer neccessarily, but can really understand the technical aspects.

This group has a number of networking events in high tech. They also have a "links" page to every other tech networking group in town.
posted by pokeedog at 5:39 PM on July 13, 2008

Seconding Daddy-O – IME, the campus career center is by far the easiest way to get hired.

When I was looking last year, AMD, Intel, IBM, Intrinsity, AMCC, Silicon Labs, NI, Cirrus Logic, Centaur, ARM, and Alereon were all willing to hire recent grads in Austin. Alereon really wanted an RFIC background (not experience - just coursework) and AMD was only hiring for a few very specific positions (circuit design, plus a couple of other things I don't recall), but the rest of the companies had a range of EE jobs available. Sun and Nvidia have offices here, too.

Does he have advanced coursework in any specialization? I know there are companies that do optics, controls, etc. in Austin, but I don't know the names offhand.
posted by suncoursing at 5:56 PM on July 13, 2008

I know Apple's in Austin, but does not offer engineering jobs on that campus (just AppleCare reps, Operations guys, and sales).

However, nVidia also has an office in Austin that offers engineering positions. He might look at their job postings.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 5:59 PM on July 13, 2008

As Daddy-O said, I strongly recommend going through the university to get new college grad positions -- most companies advertise online only for the experienced positions.

Also, if he doesn't find anything right away, perhaps he can move to Austin and start grad classes at UT-Austin. They have an excellent EE/CompE program and many grad classes are offered at night for working folks.

EE is a pretty broad field. If he's looking for straight EE (not CompE) in Austin and he doesn't like "programming" then it sounds like a Design Verification or RTL Designer position is out of the question, which are the bulk of jobs in the Austin area in EE. Manufacturing is dying everywhere in the US, so I wouldn't recommend going into chip fabrication either.

What parts of EE did he like?
posted by j at 6:01 PM on July 13, 2008

http://careers.uta.edu/mavjobs/

UTA job search for current students.

A google search popped up the Austin Technology council:

http://www.austintechnologycouncil.org/associations/7674/files/MemberDirectory.cfm

and a list of names of some tech companies in Austin.

A full list would probably not be possible to get, there are so many tiny companies doing a wide variety of things.

Austin also has a huge number of game developers. Blizzard, NCSoft, Bioware, SOE.

I would hurry. You've started this process about 3-6 months late. Most college career centers do not offer nearly the amount of support post graduation as they do after the diploma is given. You'll also have to wait until they have an interview session. Most of the larger tech companies (like NI) interview new graduates in waves, and tend to interview about 3 months before fall and spring graduations. For example the UTA career fair is at the end of September.

In the meantime, pump resumes. Tailor them for the company, and get a couple out a day.

For NI: try for the Engineering Leadership program. It lets you experience different parts of the company before settling on a permanent job. As such, they don't require a highly defined skill set.

Also, not getting a job soon after graduating is not the end of the world. Settle for a low level service job, preferably a low level technical one, like a GM for WoW, or night shift tech support, and continue the search.
posted by zabuni at 6:04 PM on July 13, 2008

I just talked to him on the phone, and I need to clarify: he said that he doesn't want to do programming full-time, he's okay with programming as part of doing other things.

Thanks for all the great info, everyone! So far I found 3 entry level jobs at the IBM site (perversely, you have to go under their "Experienced" section to get to them), and I have many more great leads to follow now.

He's okay with working at a grocery store or even Walmart if necessary, until he finds something better. He'll be staying with my so expenses will be low.
posted by marble at 7:16 PM on July 13, 2008

I'd recommend searching Indeed.com and setting up email alerts that send you keywords (engineer, e.g.) in a city (Austin) for new job postings every day.
posted by mattbucher at 7:21 PM on July 13, 2008