With nearly 100 specialized branches that it encompasses, the field of engineering offers a wide range of opportunities to students across all industries, making it the most sought after academic discipline pursued by students after class 12th, especially those from a science background. The four-year undergraduate course (B.E or B.Tech) acts as a gateway to students who aspire to work in this domain and is one of the top picks for students after completing class 12th making it one of the most popular graduation course in the country.
But have you ever wondered what after B.Tech? Certainly, the opportunities are plenty, but have you seriously pondered upon the career option after engineering that you are going to pursue? It’s natural not to have a planned answer at this point, but if you are a final year engineering student or have recently passed out, thinking about career option after B.Tech that excites and suits you, might be the first step in the right direction. Nevertheless, it will also help put your inquisitive relative’s question what after engineering? to rest.
However, the possibilities are endless and with plethora of opportunities that the field of engineering offers to its students across different domains, finding the right career after engineering is just like looking for a needle in a haystack. With wide range of opportunities, finding the right career option after engineering that excites and suits an individual is difficult and this is why career counselingafter becoming a graduate is important.
To help save yourself from drowning into the pool of stress and anxiety caused due to prolonged thinking and fussing over what after engineering, in this blog we are going to guide you and cover the top career options after B.Tech that you can pursue.
Key highlights of the blog are :-
- What To Do After B.Tech?
- Career Options After Engineering?
- Higher Studies after B.Tech
- Unconventional career option after B.Tech
- How To Get Started?
- The Bottom Line
What To Do After B.Tech?
Well, the four-year undergraduate course is comprehensively designed and lays emphasis on both practical learnings along with theoretical studies to make the students industry-ready. Although, the course opens up new doors, provides huge scope and exposure to the students, it engrosses their mind hardly leaving them with any time to think about the tons of options that exist after engineering and decide the career path after engineering that suits, excites and inspires them. Right from working in a corporate to conducting their own research, the options are numerous and with multiple opportunities and lack of time to think, determine and decide, it is natural for the students to fall into a loop of confusion and chaos leading them to stress and anxiety.
Career Options After Engineering?
Right from studying further to opting for a job, the discipline of engineering houses multiple opportunities for its students. However, lack of guidance and help can turn this boon into bane and drown the students into their own pool of confusion and anxiety.
To help you in this regard and save you from worrying about what to do after B.Tech, here is our list of top career options that you can pursue after engineering.
1)-Higher Studies After B.Tech
Opting to study further, is the most common decision that students make after B.Tech, making it the most popular career option after engineering. As an engineering student, you can choose to do M.Tech in your area of interest. This will not only help you in expanding your knowledge in your area of interest but will also equip you with the necessary skills and build you as a more-qualified engineer. For this, you can start preparing for GATE exam after engineering and obtain a good score to kick start your journey from the prestigious IITs and NITs.
If not GATE, you can also prepare and appear in the JAM exam to enter into the field of academics and research and that too in your specialized area of interest.
2)-Unconventional Career Option After B.Tech
If higher studies are not your cup of tea, then you can surely try the unconventional career option that exists after B.Tech.After engineering, you can choose to enter into a government-run public sector undertaking (PSU) and secure a high paying job and enjoy several other perks that this lucrative career path has in store for you. Along with lucrative pay, this career path provides job security and gives you a respectable position in society making it one of the best career options that most students in the country aspire for. This is why, the competition is very high but with hard work and firm determination you can easily land into a job in a Maharatna PSU (BHEL, SAIL, IOCLetc.) For this students have to prepare, appear and obtain a good score in GATE exam so as to match the requirement of these PSUs. Every year, these PSUs announces the required GATE score for application and duly checks the obtained score in the recruitment process.
3)-Management
To help satisfy their desire for power and work at a senior or executive level, studying management is the most common decision that engineering graduates often make after B.Tech. The field of management not only turns individuals into professionals who are multi tasking and are ready from managerial roles, it also helps them climb up the corporate ladder a little faster. Along with this, the field offers higher pay and lucrative perks all of which one can only enjoy being at senior or executive level. Owing to these benefits, management is considered as one of the best career options for students. However, to enter this field engineers need to get an MBA degree. For this, the students need to prepare and appear for management exams after B.Tech such as CAT, CET, ATMA, SNAP, NMAT etc. and secure a good rank in anyone of them to start their journey in this domain from a reputed institution.
4)-Entrepreneurship
Gone are the days, when graduates more often engineers used to shy away from this domain. Today, the success of many learned individuals have ignited a spark in the minds of young youths of the nation especially engineers to quit the rat race and create their own path. Certainly, the journey is easier said than done. It requires hard work and patience but the experience of starting and running their own company is what drives them. Owing to the returns of hard earned labor, an entrepreneurial journey full of highs and lows is what most engineers look up to after graduating making it one of the top career options for students. To head start in this direction, you should have the ability to identify a problem that persists and come up with a reasonable and bankable solution.Good analytical skills come handy in this regard as they help one to analyze and identify the problem pertaining in a particular industry and devise solutions to overcome them. Today, various resources and facilities such as startup incubators areavailable for these budding entrepreneurs which not prove helpful in guiding them, but also encourage them to stand out from the crowd and do something of their own that they love to do.
5)-Become An Expert
Today, the world is dynamic. From technology to working methods, everything keeps on changing at a rapid rate. While every corporate/institution wants to adapt to the market changes quickly, it’s nearly impossible for them to acquaint themselves and upgrade so quickly. This is where, experts prove vital making it one of the top career optionsafter engineering. Engineers undertake specialization courses after B.Tech to acquaint, adapt and familiarize themselves with the skill or technology which is in demand in the market. By doing so they do not only upgrade and enhance themselves in a particular domain that interests them, they also enjoy the placement assistance received which lands them into a high paying job. Today, in this fast changing world firms are in dire need of professionals who could help them adapt to modern technology and thus are forced to offer them lucrative salaries. To head start in this direction, you need to analyze, identify and choose from a wide array of skills that you want to master.
Popular skills which are in demand in today’s market are :- Block chain, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Digital Marketing and Data Science.
You can choose any one of them and kick start your journey in this domain.
6)-Civil Services
With an aspiration to serve the nation, engineers after completing their engineering can choose to join the Civil Services. Civil Services is not only among the hottest career options, but is also the favorite career choice for your parents. However, joining the Civil Services and dreaming of serving the nation is what almost everyone thinks of and thus the journey is easier said than done. To head start in this domain, you will need to crack the UPSC Civil Services Examafter engineering which is considered as one of the most toughest exam in the country as only few thousand of students get selected from the lot of 1million students who appear for this exam every year.
The exam is conducted in two stages. Stage-I is the Preliminary Examination followed by Mains (written exam + interview) in the Stage-II. Considering the competition, it is advised to start preparing early if you dream of joining the civil services after engineering.
7)-Look For Internships
Finding jobs after B.Techand landing yourself into a full time job just after completing your engineering is too good to be true, considering the present market condition. However, you can utilize this time and look for an internship or apprenticeship in a company or a firm. Although, they last only for a few months (3-6 months), internships are a wonderful opportunity to expose yourself and learn how the work is actually done in the industry. Internships are like short term training process where you understand your job role, become aware of your strengths and weaknesses and develop how to conduct yourself among your colleagues. On top of this, it also pays you enough to handle your monthly pocket expenses and also helps you attain a professional outlook, thereby turning you into a professional. Not only does it presents you to a perfect opportunity where you can learn and grow, it also gives you a chance to earn yourself a permanent position in the company by working hard and impressing your boss/head. Owing to the frequent reports of best interns being hired by companies for full-time roles, internships are one of the prominent career options that people bank upon after engineering.
8)-Certification Courses
There’s certainly no end to learning and for all those inquisitive and curious souls who wish to learn, enhance, equip and upgrade themselves, certification courses are the perfect way to move forward. After engineering, you can easily opt for one or more certification courses that are relevant to your field and interests you. You can easily pursue these long-term and short-term certification programs from renowned platforms such as CompTIA, Google, AWS, and UpGrad. These certification courses will not only expand your knowledge base and encourage life long learning and professional development but will also back your professional credibility. On top of this, you will also enjoy the exciting career prospects and will also witness a hugeboost in the pay scale.
Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (Core Infrastructure), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Project Management Professional (PMP) are some of the most valued certification programs that graduates after B.Tech opt for.
9)-Join Indian Armed Forces
Joining the Indian Armed Forces is one of the top career optionsafter engineering. The Indian Armed Forces has three separate wings – the Indian Army, the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy and an individual can easily join any of them as per his/her interest, skill and qualification that he possess. The Indian Army is the land based unit of the armed forces, whereas the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy are the air and naval wing of the armed forces. Despite the differences in criterion for joining, after B.Tech, you can easily find employment in any of these wings.
You can join the land based unit of the armed forces i.e. the Indian Army through TGC (Technical Graduate Course) and SSC Tech entry schemes and make use of your technical skills to support the troops on ground. For this very reason, engineers who join the Indian Army are allotted to specifically to one of the three branches – Corps of Engineers, Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers and Corps of Signals.
For joining the Indian Air Force (IAF) and being a part of the air wing of the armed forces after B.Tech, you can get in through the AFCAT (Air Force Common Admission Test) Entry Scheme after which you will become eligible for joining the technical squad or the ground squad of the Indian Air Force, depending upon your qualifications and skillsets.
For joining the Indian Navy as a graduate after B.Tech, you can get through SNAES (Special Naval Architects Entry Scheme) which has been recently started by the government for recruiting engineers.
10)-Campus Placement
Bagging a full-time engineering job after engineering is one of the favourite career options after engineering for students making campus placement one of the top careers options after B.Tech. Not only does it, offers lucrative pay and a sense of security, it also offers you a job that too from your college campus even before you have a degree. With increasing job offers and higher pay being offered, campus placement is one of the most favourite career options for students. However, bagging a job from campus is not that easy as it seems and if you are looking forward to campus placement then you should not only maintain decent grades and take part in extra-curricular but also prepare for job interviews and study the companies that you are applying for. In addition to these, proficient communication skills and leadership will help you convince the interviewer and bag the job.
11)-Enter The Private Sector
While Campus Placement are an excellent way of getting a job and being placed, you can also make your own efforts to land into a job into private sector. Along with banking on the Campus Placement, you can also create your profile and register yourself on reputed job portals such as LinkedIn, Indeed and Naukri.Com to build connections and find a job which matches your area of expertise and interests you. With MNCs around the globe setting up their bases in India every year and home grown companies emerging steadily throughout the major tech and industrial hubs in the country,new job profiles have come up and the job vacancies for engineers have simply skyrocketed, making it one of the top career options for engineering graduates after B.Tech.
However, the supply of engineering graduates far exceeds the demand created by private companies every year, thereby creating a cut throat competition in the job market. To avoid this, you can focus on building up your resume that highlights and presents all your skills, strengths and expertise that the job profile demands and the interviewer is keen on having. Also, you should make small adjustments and keep modifying your resume in accordance to different job roles that you are willing to apply for.
How To Get Started?
With tons of career options that engineering in general and engineering graduates in particular have, finding the right career option suitable for you is a mammoth task and is easier said than done. In order to avoid the stress, anxiety and confusion of what to do after engineering, you can simplify the process and break it into 4 different parts.
- Identifying The Career Options
Identifying the career options after B.Tech that are still in huge demand in the market, is the first and foremost step that you can take. For this, you don’t need to panic and can use your leisure time to search different webpages and access the content material to raise your knowledge and awareness on different career options that exists and are tremendously demanded in the present market.
- Choosing The Career Options
After you have identified the possible career options that exists, next step is to analyze and choose the career option that suits and excited you. From working in a corporate to becoming an entrepreneur, the possibilities are endless, but it requires proper analysis and study from your end before choosing the career option after B.Tech to pursue. You can easily check the time required, the difficulty level, the skills demanded and then select your career option that falls within your area of expertise and interests and excites you at the same time.
- Preparation
After you have identified, analyzed and selected the right career option for you, all you need to do is commit yourself and your time and start preparing to reach your goal. The journey is full of thorns and simply sitting and procrastinating would get you nowhere and so you need to pull your socks and prepare yourself for the career option that you have thought of pursuing after B.Tech.
The Bottom Line
Wrapping it up, all I would say is today the opportunities are endless. Today, this dynamic world has opened up new skies and engineering graduates have a lot of career options to bank upon after B.Tech. All you need is proper research to raise your awareness, good decision-making skills to make analysis and a little hard work to reach your goal and make your dream come true.
Well, with this we have come to an end. I hope, this blog has helped you to conquer your anxiety and have also helped you to take a small yet significant step in the right direction.
