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Friday, March 25, 2016

This blog is inactive

We have discontinued this blog and have moved all activity to our new website, www.co-op.umn.edu.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Internship Opportunity at Veolia Energy Plant

Support Veolia Energy Plant Engineering: 
  • Veolia seeks an Engineering Intern for six (6) months to work 40 hours per week. The Intern will support Veolia corporate engineering as directed in regards updates to the South East and St. Paul energy plants. The interface will be the on-site operations & engineering staff. 
  • Walk down plant systems and develop “As Built” operations Piping & Instrument Diagrams (P&ID’s) utilizing CAD. Final product will be an AutoCAD drawing generated as part of this effort. System component identification will be integrated in this process. 
  • Ability and willingness to learn plant and steam, distribution systems, operations, and maintenance activities. 
  • Provide operations engineering as needed for plant & distribution performance optimization. 
  • Must be safety conscience, able to follow direction, and have a questioning attitude. 
  • Motivated and dynamic person with ability to work independently and part of a team 
  • Technically oriented 
  • Resourceful and proactive 
Requirements:
  • Working towards a BS in Engineer (Mechanical or Chemical) 
  • Relative coursework ( i.e Thermodynamics) 
  • Knowledge of steam and water systems a plus 
  • AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, and Power Point a must. 
  • Good interpersonal skills 
  • Internship Period: Aug/Sept through Dec 2015. This is a non-co-op position.
Contact Information:
Linda Rosenberg
Senior Recruiter
VEOLIA NORTH AMERICA
Municipal and Commercial Business
200 E. Randolph, Suite 7900, Chicago, IL 60601
linda.rosenberg@veolia.com
www.veolianorthamerica.com
312 552 2807 / office
847 322 7410 / cell

Monday, July 6, 2015

AutoCAD Drafter Job Opportunity (non co-op position)

AutoCAD Drafter (Seasonal- Part time Position) 
Company: General Mills 
Location: Chanhassen, MN 

To apply, email a copy of your resume to Alexandra.Nungesser@genmills.com. 

PURPOSE: Gain or applying practical AutoCAD skills while ensuring the integrity and accuracy of plant facility drawings and maintain company standards for CAD drawings. 

MINIMUM/BASIC QUALIFICATIONS 
  • Currently pursuing or graduated from AS or Technical Degree/Certificate in Drafting/Mechanical Design or similar, 
  • Practical experience not required but preferred.
  • Ability to use AutoCAD. 
  • Minimum GPA 3.0. 
ACCOUNTABILITIES
  • Field verification of existing facility layout and schematic drawing accuracy.
  • Complete updates of layout drawings. 
  • Understand and ensure compliance with company CAD standards. 
SKILLS/COMPETENCIES/BEHAVIORS
  • To use AutoCAD with scaled and schematic drawings.
  • To work with external reference drawings on AutoCAD.
  • To integrate drawings with different scale, block and layer definitions in to standard formats. 
  • Basic knowledge of common process, packaging, electrical and facility equipment for plants. 
  • Basic knowledge of process flow diagrams and instrumentation diagrams.

Monday, April 20, 2015

From the Director's Desk: Resume Advice

Talking with a company representative during our recent interview week, I was reminded how important proficient writing skills are to a prospective employee. 

An employer, a former Co-op student himself, told me how he weeded out candidates by simply looking at the quality of the submitted resume. Little things such as misspelled words or grammar stuck out.

He mentioned that his reasoning is as follows: if a student can't put together the document that is the first impression to a prospective employer, then they don't have the attention to detail required of an engineer. 

He also told me he is always surprised at the lack of attention to those simple details in some of the resumes he sees. 

Best Regards
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
 Cordialmente
,
  礼! 
Frank


Editor's Note: 
 In case you were wondering, resumes and all the little details within them matter! Good thing there are resources to fine-tune your resume before your next interview!

Students:Helpful resources for resumes and cover letters can be found at CSE Career Services. They can help you from the beginning of brainstorming to the finishing touches to hand to an employer at an interview or Job Fair. Even though you may already have a resume that got you a job, you can send yours in to the Career Services and get helpful feedback for the next time an opportunity arises!

Employers: We want to hear from you! What aspects of a good resume stand out the most?
Platonic Figure, U of M

Friday, March 27, 2015

Interview Week in All It's Humorous Glory

As Interview Week Spring 2015 is now in the rear-view mirror, we have had the chance to sit back and enjoy the view. It was a busy spring break week on a very empty campus for our office. Few non-Co-op students were milling around while our students were hard at work during their spring break, suiting up for back-to-back interviews. 

Overall it was a successful week, but no interview week is successful without a little humor along the way. 

Frank Kelso, our Co-op Program Director reflected on the week saying, "I found one behind-the-scenes interchange particularly humorous:

Every year the MTS Systems representatives like to throw problems at students during the interview and have them think out loud. Two students were discussing this outside the interview room in the waiting room and lamented about their poor performance. I noticed an interviewer from another company, Rob*, listening in and laughing to himself.

Over lunch with the representatives that day we had a chance to talk about how the interviews were going. Rob shared with the group that he couldn't help laughing when he heard about the tough questions MTS included in their interview. 

To paraphrase Rob: "I remember 9 years ago when I was a prospective co-op student. I sweated bullets trying to answer your questions!"

Rob took a lot of good-natured joking at lunch, because he added that he didn't get an offer with MTS. It's okay; his career took off just fine, thanks to his Co-op experience!"

Overall, we couldn't be happier about the week. Looking forward to many more tough interviews in the semesters to come!

*Different names used to protect identities