adizerowinner wrote:
Things must be different in the US compared to the UK. I graduated from a good university with an MSc in nuclear engineering and I'm unemployed. Can't get a decent job to save my life.
You know what's funny? We get up to 250 applicants for most jobs at my company - a Fortune 20. You'd be surprised to know how many of these applicants are not a good AT ALL. We've gone through multiple interview cycles trying to find the right person and we end up just having to pause then start the process over again (we end up having to pull resources from another department to assist with tasks because we can't find anyone competent).
Have you tried contract work? I know it's not that desirable but at my company we do bring contractors in and give them a bit of test run to see if they are good fit. You will find that the younger, more inexperienced types are often hungrier than some of the proven guys who got lax.
I would say in the hiring process, college matters to an extent. I think if someone is coming from an Ivy League school/Stanford/Northwestern/USC etc. or a place that has a good program that aligns with what we are trying to accomplish at our company, who take a good look at them.
However, we did bring in someone in for an interview who went to Princeton and USC, hired her, and they were terrible, lazy, entitled, and strange. Conversely, we had a guy who went to Kent State (standard public school) who just crushed it for us. You just never know. It's like drafting kickers in the NFL.