In India, a majority of engineers find themselves unemployed in the engineering industry. Among the employed, a majority end up in IT jobs irrespective of their discipline. People who even get employed in the fields of their choice often find themselves in monotonous lives with no challenges at work and get bored. Some decide that engineering is just not for them and others just want more. Whatever be the reason, a majority of engineers end up searching for other avenues after some time. If you are one of them, here is a list of options that you can try:
Logistics
Logistics involves moving materials from one place to the other, like moving raw materials to factories or delivering products to consumers. The aim is to move all of these things efficiently at a minimal cost. Logisticians are responsible for tasks such as processing and tracking orders, working with other departments to keep an inventory of available products, forecasting the changes in the market, and dealing with other contracted services, for example, shipping. Here, engineers can use their problem-solving and logical thinking skills to the issues and difficulties as and when they arise.
Banking
Engineers already have skills with numbers and are trained to look for patterns in available data. With these skills in hand, an engineer is already half a banker. Here, you will need to analyze big chunks of data and then build predictive models and process the information. Banking is a huge field, but the subfields where engineers will be more comfortable are the ones related to research, analysis, and/or trading where large amounts of data from multiple sources need to be quickly synthesized to solve complex investment problems. In this, the technical skills acquired during the engineering degree will help tremendously. If one has dabbled with MATLAB, then that can be a plus.
Operations Management
In this job, one has to oversee several organizational processes and try to find ways to make them more efficient while being more cost-effective. Operations Managers are tasked with ensuring that the manufacturing and commercial branches are working together and the business goals are being met. For this, one needs to be on their feet, plan ahead, anticipate the challenges that may arise, take advantage of opportunities as and when they come, and implement different strategies to maximize efficiency and performance.
Procurement and Purchasing
These jobs will have one buying equipment and parts for projects while being cost-effective. For this, you might have to oversee several tender processes and evaluate submissions from different contractors. Your engineering degree will help you as you will already have a strong technical understanding of the equipment that you need to buy and therefore will be able to evaluate the prices in a better way.
Academia and Training
The best way to use your engineering knowledge without being an engineer is to pass on your knowledge to future engineers. One can either choose to go the academic route and teach in an institution or become a technical trainer and train employees in different companies. For academics, one might need a few more years of university, as these jobs will require at the very least a PhD and research and publications in reputed journals.
Consulting
Consultants help organizations solve business problems. This is a very broad role and one might expect to travel a lot and do anything from trying to find the best ways to increase a company’s profit margins to how the organization can navigate a merger period. This position will have you work as a part of a big team where you will have to focus on research and analysis to generate novel solutions for business problems. This career is challenging, prestigious, and competitive and offers really attractive salaries.
Technical Sales
Here one will have to draw on one’s expertise in technology to present innovative ideas that suit and meet the requirements of your clients. A strong background in engineering gets you the credibility that you know what you are doing. You need to have an understanding of the technical issues and know the ways to solve them. This position will have you working with people in research, development, and design to ensure you has a full understanding of the products and services the company offers.
Other options
This list is not exhaustive. There are a lot of other options left as well. Engineers in India find themselves in several Govt positions For these, you might need to pass the different examinations like:
In the corporate world one can also become:
Why search for different avenues?
A majority of Indian engineers are not well trained. And even if they are, there are not enough jobs to employ all the graduates India produces everywhere. There are around 4000 engineering colleges which result in 300 and more people competing for one position and every year this ratio just keeps on increasing. Most engineers can not work in new fields, as technology keeps on changing, evolving, and innovating, but a majority of institutions in the country have an outdated field. A lot of institutions do not train their engineers in AI, Machine Learning, Data Engineering, Mobile Technologies, etc., even though these will ensure employment. Even the faculty is not well trained and up to the mark in several of these institutions. And the biggest truth is that no matter which trade you chose, you will end up having a job in the IT sector, where you won’t have any job security, so it does not hurt to be well prepared and try and search for different avenues to use your skills to earn a good living.