Finding a Job or Is It Time For a Career Change?

I had a Pro/E job that paid $10 an hour. I quit because the pay was so weak. Ive been looking for several months for a new job and cant find one. Ive had some interviews but no offers.



I have less than a years worth experience in Pro/E and that seems to be holding me back. Everyone is looking for at least 3 years experience.



I have an BSME and took Pro/E to add another skill. Im getting the impression that Pro/E is a waste of time. Mechanical Engineering is a dying field as well with all the outsourcin to Asia.



Should I change careers? The engneering field looks so weak these days.

actaully its not a dieing profession but rather one thats demanding more of people. You now have to pretty much be a specialist in ur field or be very multi skilled.



But its with all professions now days.



mainly due to free trade agreements between countries in which the doller in one country is of higher value than the others.

Well, it has been a recession for the last couple of years. I notice that things are starting to pick up though. The number of engineering job listings have doubled in the last couple of months or so around here, and our vendor's leadtimes have also doubled. That means people are designing and selling more stuff.



I know we may be looking for two engineers in the near future at our company and we only have 3 here currently so we may be nearly doubling engineering staff. So things are looking up.

Whats been killing me is lack of experience with Pro/E. The usual catch22. Cant get a job because lack of experience, cant get experience because cant get a job. Its frustrating.



Its looking more and more like learning Pro/E was a waste of time and money. Its is a skill that can easily be outsourced overseas. Yeah, there will always be domestic Pro/E jobs but there will more people who can do Pro/E than there are jobs. Which will leave us fighting over scraps.

I use ProE because I like it. Not just this particular software, but what it does. I have an innate thirst to be creative and productive with it. I have 10K+ hours ProMold. I got that because I was driven.



Before I used Pro, I had many years experience in my field (manufacturing). I had a vision of what it could do. I searched out companies that had it but weren't using it and tried to negotiate a deal, just so I could get my hands on it. I helped my employer evaluate it, and we finally bought it. Before PTC came out for their quick start I had it up and running and was doing mold splits. Months later, I finally took the Basics class (my only one). It took time to get proficient and I couldn't interfere with my daytime tasks while I was getting up to speed, so I worked off the clock doing design work that I would use on the clock. I accumulated many hours that way. My company got design work for free, I got education and experience for free.



I am not bragging, I am giving an example of what it takes: desire, driven-do-what-it-takes-to-get-what-I-want desire.



Right now, I am working under Warn Act provisions, counting the days to when I will be without a job (t-minus 23 days). They are closing our department so we aren't taking on new work, but are keeping us around for repairs and ECO's. I have at my disposal ProE, ProMan, ProToolkit, ProSheetmetal, Frontpage, Access. Guess how many hours a day I am spending here at work on my computer? As many as I can stay awake.



If wind up unemployed, I'll continue to use ProE probably every day on my student version, even if I'm not actually selling my services. If I am really doing something (which I will be, it has all modules, and I am creative and driven) then I will count every hour as experience.



Sometimes, you have to decide how badly you want something, and what is it's real value, and then, IMHO, ask God to provide it.