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In a survey conducted recently, it is found that a staggering 15 lakh students pass out with an engineering degree under their belt every year.
The catch is that only 3% of them are equipped with the skills required by the corporate market. This is an alarming statistic – even if competition among the students is considered.
This goes to show that the idea of taking up engineering as a career is deeply rooted in Indian culture as a whole.
Engineering has numerous branches that are intertwined. Most of them are more of a specialization in a parent course than a separate entity course.
Ergo, it is very important to chalk out a solid career timeline in the first year. This is when the core courses are not being dealt with, so it takes the pressure off and gives you some time to visualize your future steps.
Keep reading ahead to enlighten yourself about how getting ahead of the crowd will pave the way to a successful onward career.
Career Guidance 101: Kickstart Your Engineering Life
The main branches that engineering has to offer are mechanical, civil, electronics, and electrical and automobiles.
Aerodynamics and space propulsion come under aeronautical, which is an advanced mechanical course.
As depicted, the overall choices for strategic planning are plentiful, considering that you are most likely to continue the course you have already undertaken.
But why is it necessary to start early?
The first year of engineering deals with regulating bridge courses or lessons that one is already familiar with from high school. This ensures that the students from various boards are aligned at a ground level.
This allows students to relax a little bit after going through a hectic schedule of appearing for countless entrance exams for the colleges they had shortlisted.
While the others are relaxing, you can utilize the time by planning and executing how your career will unfold after successfully decoding the kind of work you will be doing in a few years.
Allow us to enlist a few benefits for you to delve into.
1. Time Management
Time is a precious commodity for an engineering student. The list of responsibilities starts to pile up after a couple of semesters with lab records, viva voce, assignments, seminars, and other tasks to come.
In the first year, most of the core subjects are introduced to you, which will allow you to marginally categorize your interests. This will broaden the career option that is most suited for you as it will vary for other individuals.
2. Fixated Skill Set Development
Every job in the market requires a prerequisite other than the typical degree in the curriculum vitae. This may include internships, site visits, and exchange programs in and out of the country.
Identifying these opportunities at an early stage will help you focus on particular skill sets that you need to develop during the entirety of your course.
IT companies, for example, diversify the potential candidates after a certain training period. They are then assigned the appropriate roles if they passed the bar or are rejected based on their performance.
Few things could possibly be worse than underperforming at a big institution and jeopardizing your career. As such, the sooner you target the skills needed to boost your application, the better.
3. Research And Corporate Job Conundrum
This section is especially for the students aiming to gain more knowledge and put their skills to the test. Research requires a lot of undivided attention to the course that you have opted for.
If the chosen course has scope in research, opt to input your time into it right from the beginning. Corporate jobs will evaluate your education, but research will allow you to widen the horizon of the knowledge you can gain.
Exploring the research front will help you take up particular topics that will enhance your outlook towards the rest of the course.
4. Digging Deeper Into Fundamental Concepts
Mechanical engineering has the most number of branches that make use of the concepts dealt with in the core course.
Hence, to choose a career based on one of its branches, you need to get familiar with the fundamentals first.
Mechanical engineering was born after the introduction of design concepts in the field. Design engineering was one of the first courses to be introduced in this subject.
So getting familiar with the foundational topics will help you architect a strong and well-built career. Who knows what the future might hold – you might end up becoming a Mechanical Design Engineer.
5. Changing Tracks
It is quite probable that after entering into the stream, you realize that it isn’t for you, and you are being swayed in a completely different direction.
If you come to suspect that your chosen field is not to your liking, don’t just wave it off. This situation can end up going from bad to worse if nothing is done about it.
Taking time out and searching for a switch will be extremely difficult once the first year is crossed. Hence, it is suggested to look for the track that suits your lifestyle the best and adhere to it before it is too late.
To Wind Up
Your first year in university can be quite intimidating because you are simply trying to connect the dots and make sense of all that is happening around you.
Instead of wasting precious time hanging out with the seniors on the block, focusing on the career is proven to be much more beneficial.
Taking time out from the routine to try and shape up your career will even help you gain the self-worth and self-importance that you deserve.
The newly found freedom as a college student may tempt you to slack off. But a little bit of hard work coupled with some smart time management will help you shape the other three to four years with ease.
To make it to the 3% of students eligible to work in the market, grind through these early years. There is no better time than – you guessed it – right now.