Projects to showcase capabilities for job application / interview

[icesalmon]

I'm in the process of applying for jobs as a recent graduate( December 2020 ) and was curious what types of projects I could work on by myself to showcase my capabilities in Power Distribution Engineering (simulations, design work etc.).

I was thinking I could build a presentation around it and present this during an interview. My only issue is that I'm not sure what would be appropriate.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any internship experience which is why I want to try to use this to showcase my drive/passion for the work. I've applied to dozens of substation engineering positions for entry level engineering positions for 0+ years of experience.

Would looking at company websites and looking at their projects be a good start to get some ideas?

 

[berkeman]

For other specializations in EE I would have suggestions, but it sounds like @anorlunda is a better person to comment on your specialty.

 

[anorlunda]

Employers of new graduates aren't looking for people experienced in their specialties. They want smart, hard working, loyal employees who believe that the company they are joining is doing a public service.

So forget about demonstrating knowledge in substation engineering, and focus on your academic achievements and perhaps people who can talk about your smart, hard working and loyal qualities.

As a matter of fact, there are dozens of other power system engineering specialties that you probably never heard of. Let the recruiter try to recruit you into interest for the specialty they think you'll fit best.

 

[Jody]

I wouldn't be too selective. I went in for a job interview for an RF Engineering position and presented something I did with Verilog HDL. I admit I had a lot of internship experience although what they were looking for was for mmWave design (10+ GHz) the highest operating frequency I had worked with in the earlier internship was debugging a narrowband transceiver that operated within range of 500 MHz. The interviewers responded extremely positive to my presentation.

I also went to a lot of IEEE workshops we had on campus. We worked on a lot of small achievable projects that used Arduino. Something else that was extremely helpful for my earlier roles were related to layout, and I had experience with Altium designer. Altium has a free version called CircuitMaker, and so I would recommend checking that out. My suggestion wasn't much different in another thread, but maybe you can browse through what others said too :)

edit: Looks like there weren’t too many comments on the other thread :S