Job Search Experience: Meghan Fisher (Senior, Mechanical Engineering)

I thought that choosing a college was the hardest decision of my life until it came to choosing my first full time job! As sad as it is, unfortunately every college experience must come to end and every student must choose their next path.  Some students choose to remain in the world of academia or go to some sort of graduate school, but I personally wanted to take my mechanical engineering degree and enter industry. Although I knew I wanted to go into industry, the process of interviewing and choosing a job/company was an extremely difficult decision.

My professional experience began with two engineering internships, one with Georgia Pacific-Dixie and the other with ConocoPhillips. These two opportunities were completely different.  As a Mechanical Design intern, my experience with Dixie was heavily engineering based and involved intensive machine design. On the opposite end of the spectrum, with ConocoPhillips my role was business based and revolved around finding ways to optimize the lubricants department supply chain. 

I received my first full time job offer in August with ConocoPhillips in Houston, Texas which paid an outrageous sum of money. My summer at ConocoPhillips was filled with wonderful people who I could easily have seen myself working with.  However, I was extremely hesitant with the particular lack of job diversity and the ability to change locations. Since I was not completely sure of what I wanted to do, and did not want to concede to only living in Houston (which is where I would have ended up short and long term), I decided to turn down the offer.

I was very successful at the Penn State Career fair which resulted in 9 interviews, 4 turned down onsites, and 3 full time offers. In the end I chose Dow Chemical.  I chose the specific company because it had many of the things that I wanted.  I think that I want to go into management someday, but have always been told that starting technical will help gain respect of the people that are being managed.  I want to have the opportunity to change technical jobs often and experience different things if I want to within the company. Having flexibility within location was also a large factor.  Although I like Texas, which is where I have accepted my full time offer with Dow, I have the option to move to locations throughout the US if I so desire. Additionally, the people and the goals of the company aligned well with my personal beliefs. 

All in all, choosing a career was a very difficult decision.  However, it is easiest if it is broken down by deciding which things are most important to you.  Once one determines what they want to get out of the post college life, it makes the decision much simpler.