Career Planning Resources

IOE graduates bring better engineering to the market.

The IOE degree is an accredited engineering degree that opens doors to the technical arena and a wide spectrum of career opportunities. To reflect the wide array of career opportunities available to graduates, the IOE undergraduate program covers a range of topics. Students have the ability to concentrate in areas that coincide with their interests and career goals. They may focus in a particular area of IOE, or they may diversify considerably. With technical electives, students may make their program more engineering intensive or more business, social, or health science based. Regardless of the courses elected, each IOE graduate will develop advanced problem solving and optimization skills that can be applied to a number of specific fields.

The diversity in paths of University of Michigan IOE graduates is effectively demonstrated in the results from a recent survey of one thousand IOE alumni:

• 26% described themselves as non-engineering related managers or executives
• 16% were in other non-engineering positions
• 7% described their current position as “Industrial Engineer”
• 11% described their current position as “Consultant” ·
• Some graduates have even gone on to become Medical Doctors (0.4%) and Lawyers (1.8%)

Job Placement

Engineering Career Resource Center (ECRC)
The ECRC, located at 230 Chrysler Center, provides a variety of services for students starting their career. They sponsor programs on resume writing and interviewing, just to name a few.

The ECRC also manages a job searching tool called Engineering Careers, by Symplicity. The tool lists future interviews by type or major, and students can access this information 24 hours a day. The job listings are for summer internships, co-op positions, and full time permanent employment.

Get started with the resources below.

• Jobs Seeking IOEs
• IOE Job Placement Links
• Engineering Career Resource Center
• Engineering Careers, by Symplicity website
• IOE Job Resource, Powered by AfterCollege

Professional Organizations

Some professional organizations also have job boards. Use these to search for opportunities and network with other people in your field.

• American Mathematical Society
  – (try a keyword search, e.g., “Operations Research”)
• American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
• ASQ’s Public Job Board
  – You may have to register as a non-member
• Decision Sciences Institute
• Human Factors
• IIE Job Ads
• INFORMS Job Placement Service
• Mathematical Optimization Society (formerly Mathematical Programming Society)
• Production and Operations Management Society (POMS)
  – Job openings are listed by month and can be accessed by rolling over the ‘Placement’ link on the left of the page.
• SAE Career Center
• SIAM Job Board
  – (try a keyword search, e.g., “Operations Research”)
• Society for Risk Analysis