January 28, 2018 – Dr Monroe Thoughts

There are some strange parallels between searching for a mate and searching for a job. For example, it feels always like the best one is taken. Or, it should be easier to find one that recognizes my value, skills, and interests. Also, when someone finds a job/mate, it’s in an unexpected and unique circumstances that everyone can’t repeat. Often, I find myself thinking about this again for my students looking for jobs.

Let me post a couple of suggestions and links for those of you searching. First, please update a LinkedIn account. What are the important features? Basically things you think and employer would want to know. Accomplishments, things completed, etc. I’m not sure we emphasize completed tasks enough in our resumes. Not listed on my LinkedIn account is my first job, airport detailer. Basically, I washed airplanes at the local Lake in the Hills (LITH) airport. It was a pretty simple job, planes take off and hit a whole bunch of insects… Then they land and hit more insects. When the planes would finally taxi and park they were covered with bug guts. Why am I telling you this? Because I learned a lot about finishing tasks while I was cleaning planes. I may have started to clean every plane on the jet way but the only ones that counted to my supervisor were the ones that were totally clean. Really you want to be able to tell stories about finishing tasks from your classes, work, hobbies. No one really cares that you started to learn to play the piano… But if you’ve performed for as many people as Victor Borge then you’ve probably got something to say.

Anyway, you may have gotten my point. It’s easier to sell yourself if you have some interesting material to work with, so do something interesting. And, it’s hard to find all these positions so you need to treat your job search with more importance too. Look for a job like it’s your job! I have a number of different pages that I keep tabs on because I’m interested in manufacturing engineering jobs so here you go. I actually have them send me the jobs too so I can circulate them to all students.

https://afsinc-jobs.careerwebsite.com

https://www.fefinc.org/job-listings.html

https://www.aeroindustryjobs.com

http://spe.4careersolutions.org/jobs

I’m adding one more paragraph to comment about salary research. Desland Robinson sent me a link to an awesome site to research position, titles, salaries of similar positions in the state and way more. The site is maintained by the US department of labor and is called O*NET Online. I think if you are looking for a position this is a great place to do some background expectation setting. At some point, I’m going to post about estimating costs and expenses that I think will be interesting for anyone reading this blog.

One more thought to leave you with. The best way to get connected is to know someone, so use LinkedIn, and email, and your work to get to know everyone. That way you aren’t the only one saying you are capable to do the job.

We went to the pull apart and retrieved 3 sets of leaf springs given the availability and condition of the springs. Fortunately, there were two pickup trucks that looked prepared just for us because their beds had been removed. The picture below shows Zeb Dahlke unbolting the axle from the leaf springs. It was raining, so if you do this bring the right equipment. For us, this included rain coats, set of large ratchets (1/2″ torque were choice to provide the most leverage), sockets (13/16″ was the needed size for our project), hacksaw, and PB blaster.

The leaf spring cost about $25 apiece with the core charge which is not free but still less than about $1 per pound for the steel so I consider it a pretty decent spend. We checked out and brought these back to the lab to start the disassembly. After some attempts to unbolt the remaining fasteners we switched to the angle grinder to remove the hardware.

Afterward, we laid these separated spring sections out to survey. The section at the bottom of the picture, I cut to length for my first sword. This section is about 20″ approximately.