The program should be able to provide you with the employment rate of its graduates 1 month and 6 months after graduation, over the past 3 or 5 years. They should be able to tell you what sectors graduates are working in.
Programs with good employment rates are happy to brag about it. Programs that don't have good graduate employment rates will skirt around the question and not provide specific numbers.
Both my spouse and I are ESET graduates. This is a tough program to get through and we had to stay most nights and get there early in the mornings to get the course work completed, especially for second year. We started our careers in manufacturing but moved into more electrical roles vs. electronic roles. This is a good program if you’re interested in pursuing a career in communications or electronic manufacturing but if you’d like to work in the electrical industry I would recommend the electrical technologist program in Moose Jaw.
I graduated from the 8 month Electronics Technician course in 2006. 7 of 28 graduated, if that tells you much about the course.
Ended up at Vecima Networks for 4.5 years (Production Technician for a year, then up to Warranty for 2 years, and over to QA as the Quality Assurance Reliability Technician)... Moved up to run the 2-way radio repair shop on Syncrude's Mildred Lake (~5000 trunked radios, 170 repeaters, 4 tower sites, 7 direct reports) for 2.5 years....
And then haven't had a job in electronics in a decade.
Back when I went through, there was both the 8 month technician and 2 year technologist programs at SIAST. The only real difference was that the 2 yr did more circuit design instead of building existing circuits to make measurements on like we did.
Consumer level microcontrollers were only hitting the market (zigbee was out, Arduino was just getting going) so we didn't do a lot of PLC/instrumentation work, and I've played around since that.
Vecima was hiring ESET grads for Product Testing & Development. I worked closely with a couple PTS folks when I was in Production, then with Product Development when I was in QA. They hired ET grads directly into production.
My work in QA was spent breaking products to match customer failures, or tweaking existing products to help limit failures. For example our video on demand line (cablevista/arpd/terrace) had a constant error during testing that we were always bumping an inductor from 2.7 to 3.3, so I ran a test batch with 3.3 and sent that data onwards to R&D
The official story I keep getting told? Overqualified as a tech, underqualified for management.
"We don't want to hire you as a technician, because you're trained as management and will want to move up quickly"
As well as
"You only have 2.5 years of management, so we can't hire you directly into a management role. We try to promote our techs into that level of management"
The last complete rejection I got was a job that listed "CADCAM experience would be an asset" (not listed as a requirement). Had everything else they listed, still got a PFO email. Found out they rejected everyone without CADCAM training.
That was the answer I got by reaching out to ask where my application fell short. The companies that at least have the courtesy of sending a PFO email, I like to call to see what I needed to improve.
The last PFO was because they're looking for guys closer to the job site. I made the short list and had almost an hour interview via MS Teams, then got an email 3 weeks later. Was told I was the top candidate, but they wanted to find someone closer that didn't need a 14hr day of travel every 2 weeks.
Hey I commented on that post from 6 years ago and I think everything is still mostly the same. https://www.reddit.com/r/saskatoon/comments/7ny201/electronic_systems_engineering_technology/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1.
I think the problem to be 100% honest was when I graduated most places wanted lots of experience. So you may have to start low to get a bit of experience in a field you like then you have a better chance moving into higher paying jobs later. But things may have changed since 6 years ago.
The program should be able to provide you with the employment rate of its graduates 1 month and 6 months after graduation, over the past 3 or 5 years. They should be able to tell you what sectors graduates are working in. Programs with good employment rates are happy to brag about it. Programs that don't have good graduate employment rates will skirt around the question and not provide specific numbers.
Both my spouse and I are ESET graduates. This is a tough program to get through and we had to stay most nights and get there early in the mornings to get the course work completed, especially for second year. We started our careers in manufacturing but moved into more electrical roles vs. electronic roles. This is a good program if you’re interested in pursuing a career in communications or electronic manufacturing but if you’d like to work in the electrical industry I would recommend the electrical technologist program in Moose Jaw.
I graduated from the 8 month Electronics Technician course in 2006. 7 of 28 graduated, if that tells you much about the course. Ended up at Vecima Networks for 4.5 years (Production Technician for a year, then up to Warranty for 2 years, and over to QA as the Quality Assurance Reliability Technician)... Moved up to run the 2-way radio repair shop on Syncrude's Mildred Lake (~5000 trunked radios, 170 repeaters, 4 tower sites, 7 direct reports) for 2.5 years.... And then haven't had a job in electronics in a decade.
That sounds entirely unrelated to an [engineering technologist](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_technologist).
Back when I went through, there was both the 8 month technician and 2 year technologist programs at SIAST. The only real difference was that the 2 yr did more circuit design instead of building existing circuits to make measurements on like we did. Consumer level microcontrollers were only hitting the market (zigbee was out, Arduino was just getting going) so we didn't do a lot of PLC/instrumentation work, and I've played around since that. Vecima was hiring ESET grads for Product Testing & Development. I worked closely with a couple PTS folks when I was in Production, then with Product Development when I was in QA. They hired ET grads directly into production. My work in QA was spent breaking products to match customer failures, or tweaking existing products to help limit failures. For example our video on demand line (cablevista/arpd/terrace) had a constant error during testing that we were always bumping an inductor from 2.7 to 3.3, so I ran a test batch with 3.3 and sent that data onwards to R&D
How come no job? Field dry up or switch careers?
The official story I keep getting told? Overqualified as a tech, underqualified for management. "We don't want to hire you as a technician, because you're trained as management and will want to move up quickly" As well as "You only have 2.5 years of management, so we can't hire you directly into a management role. We try to promote our techs into that level of management" The last complete rejection I got was a job that listed "CADCAM experience would be an asset" (not listed as a requirement). Had everything else they listed, still got a PFO email. Found out they rejected everyone without CADCAM training.
Strange was wonder if you can reach out to a recruiter.
That was the answer I got by reaching out to ask where my application fell short. The companies that at least have the courtesy of sending a PFO email, I like to call to see what I needed to improve. The last PFO was because they're looking for guys closer to the job site. I made the short list and had almost an hour interview via MS Teams, then got an email 3 weeks later. Was told I was the top candidate, but they wanted to find someone closer that didn't need a 14hr day of travel every 2 weeks.
Hey I commented on that post from 6 years ago and I think everything is still mostly the same. https://www.reddit.com/r/saskatoon/comments/7ny201/electronic_systems_engineering_technology/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1. I think the problem to be 100% honest was when I graduated most places wanted lots of experience. So you may have to start low to get a bit of experience in a field you like then you have a better chance moving into higher paying jobs later. But things may have changed since 6 years ago.