Yu,
You are very intuitive in that you nailed the two major concerns. Your resume communicates that you are over-qualified and many companies are moving away from sponsoring work visas because it has become too expensive. My company is based out of the UK and often sponsored visas in the past. However, I hear that the approval process has recently become more difficult, and therefore more costly.
I can't speak to career options for hydrological engineering, but I got my first internship through an externship (2-day job shadowing), and from there, finding my permanent job was easy. I majored in architecture and wanted to do structural engineering halfway through, but switching majors was not an option because my financial aid would've been cut. So during my last two years, I focused my coursework, part-time job, and extracurriculars on engineering. Even so, my resume could not have competed with someone who graduated with a B.S. (let alone an M.S. or PhD!), so this is a case where literally getting your foot in the door is required to make a solid case for yourself. You can also create these opportunities by volunteering with your local professional society (ASCE!), which will connect you with other industry professionals on a personal level. Over the years, I've been asked many times by fellow ASCE colleagues to fill vacancies in their companies, so it just comes to show you how valuable a professional network can be for job security and much more!
Best of luck!
Jane
------Original Message------
Howdy! My name is Yu, I am a PhD candidate in hydrologic modeling. Recently I am considering finding a job in an industry area instead of pursuing a career in research. The reason why I made this choice is that I found myself very interested in applying what I have learned from research to solve realistic industry area problems. But in the process of applying for jobs, I have confronted with several obstacles and questions as below:
1. I know that internship experiences are very important to finding a full time job. So, I am actively looking for intern opportunities. But the problem is that I have sent out lots of my resumes but heard nothing from the companies. I wonder three reasons might explain the situation: 1) my international student identity. 2) most of the companies only need bachelors or masters for the internship. 3) my major for the degree is actually Agricultural Engineering but my actual study area is hydrologic modeling (because of the project I worked on. 4) my own ability (skills, achievements etc) to meet the requirements of the job description. I have tried hard to avoid the last reason by applying only very related (to my study area) positions. But I am still not so sure about the first three reasons. Do you think I am right? And if you agree, what strategies do you think should I make to overcome the difficulties?
2. Based on the difficulties from finding an internship, I doubt that is it really rare for PhD students (specifically for international students) to transfer to industry area in hydrology engineering majors? If so, what should I do to improve the chances of getting hired in this situation?
3. Besides the consultancy, design, construction companies, are there any other institutes or groups that may need combining research part and application part together?
4. If transferring to industry area is not a wise choice for right now, should I continue pursuing a career in research first (e.g. find a postdoc position), and then looking for potential opportunities afterwards?
Thank you so much in advance if you could provide me any suggestions.
Best regards,
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Yu Zhang S.M.ASCE
College Station TX
zhangyu199002@...------------------------------