you think this is a good course to take?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

Hey guys, I’m currently a senior majoring in mechanical engineering planning to graduate on spring. Due to my depression, my gpa is low and I barely have any experience other than 1 retail job and 2 volunteering work (which was years ago).

This summer, there’s a Summer 2015 Project Management Course opened for students. This course doesn’t follow traditional teaching; it does not provide any exam or homework. It is real-world, relevant, applicable, adaptive, career-driven, team-based and hands-on.

The course is very multidisciplinary across business, engineering, technology, phycology, humanities and math.

It is about mastering real-world professional project management strategies and leadership skills that enable you to make difference, solve problems and overcome challenges in any project. This includes managing people, time, money, communication, tasks, risks, expectations, negotiations, conflicts, quality, teams & projects and even managing yourself. This course can unleash many career opportunities since there is a very high demand in all industry today for project management skills.

The name of this course is Software & IT Project Management.

My question is, would it be worth it to take this? It says it provides real-time hands on experience so I feel like this will be something good to put in my resume.

It’s a hybrid course; meets every Thursday, 5 times online and 5 times face-to-face, meeting 10 weeks.

Please tell me what you guys think

thank you

course information: http://www.njit.edu/bulletin/_347879CD49CEE714FBC6754D1D1FECC32E438E14.html

2

Depends on what your other possible activities for the summer are. If you get a real summer job relating to your major, that may be more valuable in both experience and monetary earnings.

3

but unlike internships/co-ops, don’t engineering jobs require real experiences? I don’t think there will be any engineering part time job and I don’t have any engineering experience…

4

If you have no other plans, maybe other than working part-time, you may learn some interesting things here.

Project management is an important part of engineering work … and maybe would be a good fit if your GPA is low, maybe would be better to manage, control costs, etc than trying to do difficult technical work all day.

You should have been thinking about work for the summer by now, if not, go to career office and see if they have something related to what you would like to do in only 12 months. Part-time, low pay, no pay, may all be a good option to get experience … and then you don’t have to say I don’t have experience anymore.

5

I talked to the career advisor and they just tell me to try to get a internship and part-time job. They don’t have anything “set-up” for you to try out or anything like that. I mean I do have experience which are like 1 hospital volunteering, 1 volunteering at roosevelt pond, and 1 part-time at Shoprite which were like 3~5 years ago. I asked the professor what type of project we’ll work on and he responded by saying:

This course is about managing all projects regardless of the discipline. In my teaching, I will use IT examples and beyond.

The projects we use – while real world driven – are not the purpose of the course but rather being able to master the project management skills that are global for computer science and mechanical engineering alike, etc.

6

Class sounds good. Not a huge investment in time, and yes project management has a unique set of skills that apply to really any project, has lots of work opportunities, and is different than core engineering classes that really train you to be the one solving the problem, not the one managing a project that solves a problem. Would give you some new perspectives too and sounds good for future employers.

Maybe also ask your professors and other folks at the school if they know of any internship opportunities that have recently come up, even working in a lab part-time at NJIT during the summer could be good experience.

Sorry, I missed your depression in first post, I think that is even more reason, if you are feeling up to it, to do something interesting during the summer.

7

Thank you very much for the response. Since this class meets every Thursday as hybrid course (50% online and 50% face to face), I thought it would be good to do some part time job with this as well.

  1. Although this is good opportunity, it's not like I won't be accepted for any technical job when I graduate just because management skill is not related to it right?
  2. Regarding depression, I wonder what I should tell them when they ask about gpa...
8

I took this course multiple times, I still don’t know what I’ve actually learned. I have a certificate in Project Management.

9

you took it at njit?

10

You sounds like you’re more or less already sold on it. The worst that can happen is that it will be a waste of time, which is still no big deal.

11

I’m thinking about just looking for part time job but, ugh man I don’t know anymore…

12

I took at UCI and completed the 6 courses for Project Management certificate because my company paid for it. But seriously it didn’t help Me finding any job within the company that paid for it. I’m currently doing project management but it’s the certificate that I was hired. It sounds like it’s an extension course, at least it was at UCI, save your money, do something else.

13

Thanks for the help, I guess I’ll just find part-time job or technical part-time (although unlikely) if I can and keep tailoring resume/cover letter with my advisor while working. Reviewing software/skills I learned in school…etc. But man I wonder if there’s anything else useful I can do to prepare myself before job hunting…

Any advices?

14

You have a full year remaining, correct?
You could learn a few new programming languages (C/C++, Java, C#, Ruby/Javascript, probably in order from most to least important for ME), maybe do some research work (ask a professor to work in their lab - some professors still work during the summer and you could start right away), maybe join a robotics group (this is surprisingly useful experience for getting an engineering job), and become more proficient at CAD tools. Worse than finding a real internship, yes, but significantly better than doing nothing.

15

The thing is all those formula, ASM…etc clubs people are looking for who have some type of experience so that new people can start working right away, so they told me that they doubt they can’t do much for me. I did take java class so I’ll review it I guess, along with creo,solidworks and autocad.

So it’s not possible to get any engineering experience at this point other than these?

16

You have three years of ME coursework and you know CAD. That’s very far from no experience. I think the issue here is more that you aren’t marketing yourself.

In case you are from a foreign country or you were just never told: in the US, you have to shamelessly exaggerate your capabilities in your resume, interview, etc. Make everything sound more impressive than you think it is worth, tell a good story that is mostly true but paints you in a more favorable light than you think you deserve, and the like. Before you start looking for anything, maybe you should write a resume that looks impressive when you read it (that contains nothing that a call to HR would contradict) and be able to tell a good story for each one. Then use that as a basis to describe what your prior experience is.

17

Post#15, it’s called marketing. I’ve looked at all people that I used to work with, boy do they inflate their resume. But I don’t suggest that, find someone you know and admire and try to see if you can write similar style of resume. Try to use other’s resume as a sample, not copying them verbatim.

18

Engineers (both employers and potential employees) don’t like the idea of exaggerating on resumes, and with good reason. It would be nice if it weren’t necessary, but if you are too honest to the point of selling yourself short, you will write yourself out of their consideration before you even get a chance. A sample of a good resume, i.e. one that gets a sizeable number of calls back, is very helpful.

In short: http://dilbert.com/strip/2004-07-13