Start planning NOW for next summer's internships?

I do a lot of writing for IEEE-USA's Today's Engineer, where my latest article covers a bunch of internships and fellowships that students can take advantage of in the summer of 2010.

These are great opportunities, but why did I write about them in November? Easy: the application deadlines are just a couple of weeks away.

Internships and other work-experience programs are just about the most valuable things you can add to your resume before you graduate and start searching for a full-time job. They put you in the real world, give you the perspective of the workplace, allow you to meet valuable contacts, and let you try new things. Plus, they don't last forever, so you always enter an internship with an end-game in mind.

But fitting an internship into your college schedule can be difficult at best. I remember needing to heavily rejigger my course schedule so I could fit an internship into my senior year, and even then, I still wish I'd picked one that offered at least a tiny stipend. The cost of getting to the internship twice a week sucked so much money from my starving-student wallet that I could barely afford to eat that semester!

But man, was it all worth it. I'm still in contact with some of the people I met on my internship, and I put the lessons I learned to practice on an almost daily basis.

So anyway, early planning... Companies that have regular intern programs can't accept an unlimited number of students. They might take one or two at a time, and often start taking applications months in advance. If there's a company in your neighborhood you really want to intern for, chances are there are a hundred other students salivating for that opportunity, too. Which means you'd better get your application in before them. Like, now.

You can start your search at Experience.com, where you can use the job-search feature to specifically look for internships.

So don't delay. Start thinking about it, and then get moving!

Where are the high-tech jobs? NYC, Silicon Valley and Austin top the list

Where should you focus your job-search efforts? According to a report from Dice.com, the most high-tech job listings are in Silicon Valley* and New York City.

Outside of NYC, the entire Northeast area is apparently experiencing high-tech job growth, especially in New Jersey.

High-tech job postings in Charlotte, NC, and Austin, TX, are also up 45% and 31% since the beginning of the year.

Job postings aren't up that high percentage-wise in NYC and Silicon Valley, but the sheer number of jobs in those areas puts them at the top of the list. New York City job postings are up 16%, while Silicon Valley saw a 6% rise.

So keep this in mind when you're job searching, and narrow your search to look at some of these areas.


* Since Silicon Valley isn't a real city, it's sometimes hard to search for jobs in that area. Use cities like San Francisco, San Jose, Los Altos, Palo Alto, Mountain View and Milpitas for your searches. Or check Wikipedia for the complete list of "Silicon Valley" cities.

Licensing: Your Key to Working Anywhere, at Any Time?

Not every engineering field requires the people practicing it to be licensed. But one field that does is civil engineering, and here's the tale of one man who has just landed his 50th civil engineering license, allowing him to work anywhere in the United States.

Tracy Letzring is also a licensed environmental engineer and registered structural engineer. He fully admits that having all of these licenses gives him and his company a marketing edge over the competition, but in practical matters, it also lets him work for any client in any state or city, and not just in his own neighborhood.

Working in different states requires different knowledge and skills. For example, Letzring says that California's license required him to learn about seismic migration, while he needed to learn about Arctic conditions to land his license in Alaska.

How much do you need to think about licenses in these particular careers? It's up to you. But you do want to plan ahead. It would suck if you had to turn down a job or couldn't land a client because you were licensed in one state but not in its neighbor. Something to consider...