I graduated with a 1st in Electronic & Electrical Engineering MEng in 2011 from a 'top' engineering university.

I have worked every summer holiday in paid work, which has at least been professional experience. First 3 holidays was in civil engineering doing drainage for motorways, fourth summer was for corporate finance specifically for engineering/renewable tech companies. My work there made the company quite a lot of money which I suppose is meant to be good but if anything this experience has held me back because people think when I go for proper engineering jobs that im only doing it 'because there is a financial crisis', however I only took it as it paid and it was related to the industry I want to work in (renewables related) so I could decide what sector I wanted to be in in the near future. Also I was able to research the R&D departments of a lot of large engineering companies, and it seems that a lot of professors/start up tech companies are clueless when it comes to working out how to take their technology from the university lab in commercialisation, so I thought it would be good to get some knowledge of what is involved.

Now I realise that this doesnt matter and I should have just got a generic electrical engineering job

I have applied to 5-6 grad schemes and perhaps 12 PhDs. I can't even get work experience to help me get a PhD and now I dont really have any money left to do this anyway. I've applied abroad to PhDs but the 1st I got looks like a C as the professors just look at the % on your exams.

Now its coming round to a year out of university and I have nothing

I wish I just bummed around at university and did literally nothing like almost everyone does there, got the 2.1 which is easy even with your eyes closed and gone on some generic scheme

I'm not quite clear what answer you are looking for here? What do you actually want to do?

If you focus on what you can offer and what you want then someone here (including me ) may be able to give you some clues as to how to get it.

Getting an engineering job at ANY level is really really hard at the moment (I'm both involved in recruitment and considering my own career options at the moment), and you've got to be strongly aware of what companies want and what you genuinely have to offer them. Unfortunately this posting does rather come across as "I'm a genius, the world is full of idiots and they won't give me the job I deserve" - you need to be extremely careful that you don't come across like that in application letters and interviews!

So give us some positives of what you want and let's take it from there...

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Andy Millar CEng MIET MCMI

http://www.linkedin.com/in/millarandy

Similar to the post above, what is it you are actually asking advice for? Or is it just a rant due to your current situation?

In any case, given that you had a successful spell in you last placement then is there not scope for a permanent postion there?

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JBB IEng MIET

What are you looking for work wise?

How does a 1st class degree look like a c? unless you had an abnormal amount of management modules etc that you aced while struggling in electronics, but even that doesn't sound plausible.

Perhaps avoid Phds and grad schemes? phd's can be quite funny giving priorities to they're own graduates whereas grad schemes are notorious for looking for person skills and the 'right fit' as opposed to the best qualified.
Why not apply to all the standard design jobs out there? There's allways some for the qualified but inexperienced.

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Andrew Packwood MEng

A couple of Q's,

1) What modules did you study during your time at University?
2) Was your qualification obtained through a Russell group/ red-brick university?
3) Where abouts are you located in the UK?

Sam Foster