why have i not been able to get a job even after one year? is something wrong with my cv? please help. struggling.

I am working in plan review now in civil it’s horrifying the number of you guys signing off on culverts while you admit in meetings you don’t know Bernoulli’s equation or never “read up“ on basic sight distance requirements. Yet you guys are signing and submitting plans.

I don’t want to work in civil anymore but I am a minimum of 2-3 years away from financial independence due to my high austerity lifestyle. I was recently offered a 150k civil engineering position in the city but rent is 3k on a 1 bedroom that is not a good wage but high for civil. If I was in tech with 10 years experience the equivalent wage would be 200-300k.

I have searched extensively on the internet, but I couldn't find a proper answer. When I searched for this question, I found a number of articles on the reasons why a structure might collapse, but not on how it actually collapses. I want someone to explain to me the process of how a building collapses, step by step.

If you think there are a lot of ways a structure can collapse and you can tell me about it, I just want answers. Thank you!

Professional civil engineer with 7 years consulting experience seeking municipal engineering/project delivery roles. Looking for feedback on whether my resume effectively communicates leadership, project coordination, and technical experience

Looking for honest advice from people who have actually been through the process, not what the websites say.

Has anyone gotten into a Canadian MEng or MS in civil engineering or a related field with a GPA below 3.0 but 5+ years of professional experience?

Did the work experience actually move the needle, or is GPA a hard cutoff in practice regardless of what programs claim?

Any programs that were more flexible or realistic than others? Online options especially appreciated.

Not looking for the official answer, looking for what actually happened for you.

Hey everyone,

​Looking for some career advice from fellow engineers, project managers, and planners working in the UAE.

​My Background:

​Education: B.Tech in Electrical & Electronics Engineering (plus past intern experience in software dev).

​Current Role: Project Engineer at a sub-contractor/integrator in Dubai for \\\~2 years now.

​Domain: Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), traffic signal infrastructure, IC4 studies, field device integration, and authority coordination (RTA/SRTA projects).

​The Dilemma:

I'm early in my career, ready to grind, and my main priority right now is maximizing my income. I feel my current site/execution role has a ceiling unless I pivot.

​I’m considering making a move toward a Planning Engineer / Project Controls role because I hear the salary growth in infrastructure planning is significantly higher than staying purely on site execution.

​My Questions for the Dubai Reddit Community:

​Is 2 years of site experience enough to switch to a Planning Engineer role? (I plan to learn Primavera P6 thoroughly over the next few weeks).

​What is the current scope and salary market for Junior Planning Engineers in ITS / Smart Infrastructure / Traffic engineering in Dubai right now?

​Should I stay in ITS/Traffic Infrastructure and target Tier-1 consultancies (Parsons, WSP, AECOM) / vendors (Siemens, Swarco, etc.), or look into relocating to KSA mega-projects for a bigger jump?

​Any specific certs or skills besides P6 I should pick up to stand out to recruiters here?

​Appreciate any honest feedback, reality checks, or referral advice! Thanks in advance.

Hello everyone, I hope you're all having a great day.

​I’m a student in Canada, graduating later this year with a 3-year advanced diploma in Civil Engineering Technology. I’d like to ask for your advice regarding my future career path.

​I’m currently doing a 12-month co-op in the public sector—4 months as a CAD technician and the remaining 8 months as a material tester/lab technician. I must have left a good impression on my supervisor because I’ve been offered a full-time lab technician position after I graduate.

​It’s a very stable job with great work-life balance, decent pay, and wonderful coworkers. As an entry-level job for a freshly graduated Civil Engineering Technologist, I think it’s an excellent opportunity. However, when I think about my long-term future, I have a few concerns. I’d love to get some advice from the professionals here.

​1. How is the current civil engineering job market in Canada?

My coworkers mention that we are in a recession and that it’s tough for recent grads to land a job right now. Is this true?

​2. Public vs. Private Sector for a new grad?

From my experience working in the public sector, I’ve found it to be a very stable and low-stress environment, which is nice. But on the flip side, it feels slow and somewhat stagnant. I feel like it might not be the best place for a new grad to gain a wide variety of work experience. If I planned to stay in the public sector forever, it would be fine, but I can't shake the feeling that I’ll fall behind my peers working in the private sector. Both have pros and cons, but since I’m freshly graduating and need to absorb as much knowledge and experience as possible, I feel the private sector might be a better fit for me right now. Am I looking at this the right way? What are your thoughts?

​3. Taking a guaranteed job vs. holding out for a design role?

Having experienced both drafting and material testing, I found that I much prefer drafting. I want to steer my career towards design—specifically, I want to become a highway/transportation designer. Even though I have a guaranteed full-time offer here as a material tester, it’s not what I truly want to do, so I know I’ll eventually need to switch jobs.

​In this case, would it be better to accept the material testing job first and look for a design role while working? Or should I endure a job-hunting period after graduation and try to land a design role from the start? For those of you involved in hiring, which type of candidate looks more appealing?

​4. Best technician experience for a future P.Eng?

My long-term plan is to work for a bit, then return to university via a bridge program to get my degree and eventually become a P.Eng. I don’t want to just pass the time while working; I want to gain experience that will genuinely help me as a future engineer. What kind of technician-level jobs are most helpful for an EIT or P.Eng career path and look best on a resume? Between surveying, material testing, and drafting, which one would stand out the most and be the most beneficial?

​Sorry for the long list of questions! I don’t have many professionals or mentors around me to ask, which is why I’m turning to Reddit. Also, please excuse any awkward phrasing, as English is not my native language and I used a translator for some help.

​I wish everyone reading this a wonderful day!

So I got an offer from HDR, and I wanted to know how often they give raises. I would be within the broad engineering department (I don’t want to give away my identity lol). Are raises really department dependent? Or it is a company wide thing? does my direct supervisors determine if I get a raise or not? Or is it determined by company policy as a whole.

Thank you!

What's the craziest way you've done time theft? What activities did you do, for how long and how often? Did you ever get caught and what are your best strategies? (Yes I'm ready for the replies from the moral/budget police as well)

Proving my earlier point, QS salaries are higher than (consultant) civil engineers. Both are desk based roles, both require good numerical skill sets, an understanding of guidance, and practical experience.
One requires a masters degree, the other does not.
Yet QS salaries are about 10-20% higher. Why?

Are these diagonal cracks within 2’ of a support beams worth Reporting/do they need to be evaluated? Multiple beams with same pattern.

Howdy. Im an Environmental Engineering senior about to graduate this December 2026 and Im interested in working for the LADWP as an env engineering associate.

However, im from the east coast… and on their website it seems like they only hire from on campus interviews. Some places on their website say that they do online interviews but im not sure if they “opened” the application to everyone else. Honestly the whole thing seems confusing to me so I was hoping to get some clarification here.

I work in a very HCOL city, and as shown, I have experience interning at a WWTP, my local water authority, and im currently working at a global consulting firm on massive projects on the water team. I feel like I would be a decent applicant, but getting my resume through the door seems like the hard part.

Any advice/tips/criticism would be much appreciated! *This is not me trying to shoot my shot I just want to understand how someone like me, who is out of state, could apply*

Interned as a CMT and was extended an offer at a large international firm with multiple business lines. Pretty firm on pursuing my masters in structural engineering with hopes to work in properties and buildings. Considering taking the offer contingent on that they can accommodate me pursing my education via evening classes. Compensation and benefits are fair and all with a clear path to work as a PM in 3-4 years time; however, I would ideally transition to a structural group within the firm given the opportunity. Company also has tuition reimbursement still working out the details on that but I am fairly certain I would qualify. I graduate this next spring and am taking my EIT this fall.

Would working as a CMT stunt my career or be a mistake? I know it’s far from the real design work I want to do but I figured some field experience for a year or 2 while I wrap up my masters could be somewhat valuable despite not being quite translatable. Should I just try to intern in a different group within the company since I already have my foot in the door? What’s the wisest career move here?

Feel like it’s definitely a strong financial move; I’m just hoping it wouldn’t hinder my long term career. Would love to hear yals thoughts!

For context, I graduated last year with a degree in Civil Engineering and immediately started an MS in Data Science program. My goal has always been to work in the transportation field, where I can combine my civil engineering background with the analytical and data skills I’ve developed. applied to nearly 300 roles ranging from transportation and traffic engineering to construction project roles.
The frustrating part is getting rejections even for positions that mention only a high school diploma requirement and 0 years of experience.

I’m also preparing for the exam through the Texas Board next month, but at this point, I’m starting to question whether it will make a difference or help me move forward in my career path 😔😢

I’m lost here , for example ; there is literally like 30-35 applications I sent to WPS for Entry level role , all got rejected even for those that clearly says entry level 0 YOE …
I tailored my resume to match the job role, highlighted the relevant keywords, and added some civil engineering-related projects I’ve worked on, but still nothing happened.

I don’t need sponsorship ( USC) !

Any advice from people in civil engineering, transportation, or analytics would be greatly appreciated.

Edit 1: out of 300 I applied , Only had a screening call from KH and they went silent for weeks and a month…..

I am a Canadian civil engineer with +9 yrs of experience in land development, and I’m planning to relocate to the US - preferably Texas, North Carolina, or Florida. open to other states if needed

I'm considering getting a Master's degree in Civil Engineering, but I'm not sure if it would be worth it. I already have a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and most of my professional experience is as a Quality Engineer in automotive manufacturing for 10 years. I'd like to switch careers and work in Civil Engineering for a local municipality or maybe a federal government organization.

Should I just work on passing the FE then apply for EIT roles? Or should I pursue a Master's degree in Civil Engineering, pass the FE and apply for EIT roles then? I'm not sure what to do.

I appreciate any advice.

Hi everyone. I am a Transportation Engineering student (Civil and Environmental Engineering department) from Bangladesh, still learning, so please forgive me if I say something wrong.

I am working on a research project involving NLP and sentiment analysis on Bangladeshi newspaper articles. The project requires collecting news articles from around 10 newspapers — both English and Bangla language publications — covering the period from 2015 to 2026. I need the article headline, full text, publication date, and source name, ideally stored as CSV or JSON files, one per newspaper or per year.

I have already tried Python with BeautifulSoup and Selenium, GDELT API, Archive.org CDX API, and pre-scraped Kaggle datasets. For two newspapers I managed to collect solid datasets. For the rest I keep running into bot detection, CAPTCHA blocks, anti-scraping measures, or very uneven temporal coverage where certain years return zero articles at all.

I cannot offer payment, but I can offer co-authorship on the research paper I am working toward publishing. If you have experience collecting large-scale news archives from South Asian or Bangladeshi news websites and are interested in collaborating, I would love to hear from you. Any general advice is also very welcome even without a collaboration.

Thank you for your time.

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some honest feedback because I'm struggling to understand where I stand in the Canadian job market.

I recently graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from China. I have two internships related to transportation planning and structural engineering, but all of my experience was in China (not in Canada)

I recently became a Canadian permanent resident and will be moving to British Columbia shortly.

I've tailored my resume to Canadian standards, I'm planning to register as an EIT with EGBC, and I've been applying for Graduate Civil Engineer/EIT positions.

However, I've already been rejected from some graduate positions without receiving an interview.

I completely understand that the market is competitive, but I'm trying to understand what employers are likely seeing on my resume that makes them pass on my application.

Is it mainly because:

my degree is from China?

I don't have Canadian work experience?

my internships aren't considered equivalent?

there are simply too many stronger candidates?

or something else?

If you were reviewing my resume as a hiring manager, what would immediately concern you?

More importantly, what would you recommend I do over the next 3–6 months to become someone who actually gets interviews for graduate civil engineering positions?

I'd really appreciate honest feedback, even if it's blunt.

There are regular parts of the week/month where we're light on work and I have down time, sometimes hours at a time where I'm doing nothing and haven't submitted my work because I know there is nothing lined up after. What do you do in these times? Full time in office so I can't do chores/miscellaneous WFH side tasks

I'm looking to take my civil FE and apply for my EIT license. I have 2 years of experience as a part time water resources engineer intern. I just got my bachelor's in environmental science from UC Davis.

So... will my part time job count as 2 years of work experience?

And is it possible to say I've had at least a year's worth of engineering college level education if I've taken upper division hydrology courses and other college level physics, mathematics, GIS, geology, and surveying classes? Between community college and university I have about 7 years of full time classes under my belt.

Or should I try to get my masters in specifically civil engineering? Any advice would help. I am in CA. Thanks!

I’m an engineer with about 2 years of experience in land development, and I’ve recently become curious about some other areas of the industry, particularly transportation engineering.

I know it’s common to hear about people leaving and coming to engineering entirely, but I’m more interested in how feasible it is to switch disciplines within civil engineering once you’ve already started down a particular path.

A few questions for those who have made a similar move or have experience hiring:
- How difficult is it to transition from land development to transportation engineering (or another civil discipline)?
- Does it become harder to switch the longer you stay in one sector?
- At what point do employers start viewing you as “too specialized” to make a change?
- How much of my land development experience would still be considered relevant if I applied for transportation roles?
- Would any of my previous experience essentially not count toward career progression because it’s in a different discipline?
- If I switched after 5–10 years instead of now, would I likely have to take a step back in title, responsibilities, or compensation?

I’m not necessarily planning to make the jump immediately, but I’d like to understand how flexible civil engineering careers are and whether it’s something I should explore sooner rather than later.