Allie asked Parika Petaipimol, Pandion Therapeutics

AddedSunday, June 2, 2019 at 8:38 PM

Is it easy to find a a biomedical engineering job after college with no experience?

I love IT and biomedical engineering. I am nervous about engineering since they require a lot of experience for a job, and it is not flexible like IT ( I can work from home).

  • Parika Petaipimol , Pandion Therapeutics
    Answered Thursday, August 8, 2019 at 4:03 PM
    Hi Allie, 
    The short answer to your question: No. It is not easy to find a job after college with no experience (even if you have a BS or MS or PhD). It's particularly challenging for biomedical engineers because there are different "flavors" of biomedical engineering (like, imaging or neuroengineering or cell and tissue engineering or biomechanics). 
    
    BUT.... Yes, there is a but. All engineers coming out of school have to start from somewhere. 
    
    Just because you have a degree in BME does not mean you will be doing BME for all of your career if you so chose not to. IT and BME have quite a bit of overlap (I mean, look at bioinstrumentation! Data sciences! Computational Biology!) The beauty of BME is that you get exposed to a lot of different aspects of the other classical engineering (Chemical, Mechanical, Computer) and the classical sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics) and a whole lot of computer science, physiology, and cell biology mixed in. Your experience is what you make of it. 
    
    Your major does not define you - it directs you in your first couple steps of what you want to do (and what you don't want to do). What are you going to do with your skills? What problem do you want to solve in this world? And ask yourself, how am I going to get there because it will take a couple of steps (and maybe a couple of back tracks). That should be what ultimately guides you in your career. And you need to be brave and keep an open mind. Look at job opportunities as training grounds - think of what skill sets you will gain and how that will help you in the future. And your goals can change! Never stop learning!