Career / resume / job hunting advice for moving to a big city and looking for an engineering / government job.

July 14, 2008 7:18 PM

Career / resume / job hunting advice for moving to a big city and looking for an engineering / government job. Looking for advice to help me squeeze every bit of juice out of my first job which I consider to be a very rare job for someone of my background, age, and experience.

I'm coming to you all for some career help.

I currently live in Southern Maryland. To put it bluntly, I pretty much hate it. I would love to live in a city environment with a seemingly endless amount of things to see, people to meet, and places to explore.

I need to find a new job to do this, however, since it is too far of a commute for my current job. I work with the Navy as a contractor in the aircraft acquisition field right now. DC seems to be my best bet for the next step of my career. Anyone else have any other ideas for cities to move to in this line of work?

Does anyone have any tips for attempting to move to this area, for jobs in the area, and more importantly, does anyone have any tips for resumes for engineering/government jobs?

I'm also looking for some tips on executing a massive application process like the one I'm about to undertake. I don't exactly know where I want to work or what I want to do next. However, I'd like to avoid spamming the planet with my resume if at all possible. I want to make it more personal than that as I believe my interpersonal skills are above average. Should I be calling HR contacts for every company I find?

More importantly, the job am I about to leave is almost impossible to get for a person of my age and experience and I want to capitalize on this. What is the best way to make sure I squeeze every ounce of juice out of this experience? I feel like it could carry a lot of weight and take me pretty far in this next career step.

Thanks as always, ladies and gentlemen.

posted by decrescendo to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Well, DC is about tops for government consulting jobs. Remember the cost of living will be significantly higher than Southern Maryland (I mean signficantly). You can check out living in Arlington, which is more city like than most American cities.

I worked at government job out of college and I got it mostly because of my grades. What kind of grades did you have in Undergrad?

Also, if you want to work at government consulting job, you can get a far way with knowing people that work at those companies. That's how nearly everyone I know who switched jobs got their jobs (through referrals).

Do you have security clearance yet? If not, wait it out. If you can get a TS, you can almost write your ticket in DC.
posted by sandmanwv at 7:47 PM on July 14, 2008

Response by poster: Yes. I am cleared SECRET currently. No need for TS yet and my company is small enough now that they won't pay for it unnecessarily.

I had around a 3.0 undergrad.
posted by decrescendo at 7:51 PM on July 14, 2008

Navy you say? There's gobs of military contractor jobs here in San Diego - most of them navy. SPAWARS, Apogen, Titan, DofNavy, SAIC.

I'm not sure what you're looking for or if Southern California a possibility, but it might be a place to consider.
posted by 26.2 at 8:54 PM on July 14, 2008

Where are aircraft manufactured, besides Seattle/Boeing? Where is the Navy, besides Virginia and San Diego? What about the Air Force (Being Christian helps with that, I hear). What about becoming a lobbyist, for the industry?
posted by Goofyy at 11:18 PM on July 14, 2008

Response by poster: Yeah I hear San Diego is incredible. Lots of jobs out there for me I'm sure but I don't know if I'm ready to move all the way out there yet. Lots of my friends and family are in the Pittsburgh and Baltimore areas.
posted by decrescendo at 8:07 AM on July 15, 2008