The Job Forum

0:00:00
Welcome to the Job Forum. My name is Mana Azizoltani and I am a PhD student at the Harrah College of Hospitality here at UNLV. On this show we discuss the journey through college and into the workforce with recent graduates of different disciplines. Welcome to the Job Forum. Alright, well let's get this party started. So in today's episode I am happy to have one of my, well another one of my personal best friends, Andy Klein, who's here talking about his experience working as a civil engineer. Andy, do you want to give a little introduction of yourself? No, that'll just about do it. Best friend of Mana, that's really the best acolyte of my resume anyway, so. Yeah, I hope that's right on top, you know, like Andy Klein, comma, you know where people put like... Yeah, I put my name below that, it's like... It's M.B.F., Manna's best friend. But, yeah, so do you want to say, like, you know, where you went to college and, you know, your job or whatever?

0:00:55
Yeah, well, hitting on those two things, I started out here at UNLV, did my four and a half years, got out after a good behavior, and then moved on to, at first, a construction management company called Aggregate Industries, and I was kind of just doing some, kind of some admin work helping keep construction going for road work projects but that kind of fizzled out after six months because they wanted me to work nights and I didn't feel like I really wanted to go to college for four years to work night shifts so I took some time off and studied hard for what was called the professional engineering exam. That's what makes that later yeah that's what makes kind of big bucks but then right as I was taking the test for that my buddy at this company called Stantec, where I currently work now, had an opening, had a foot in the door for me. So I interviewed there, did good enough to get the job. And now I'm working as a civil engineer there, working on water and wastewater projects here in the Valley and abroad, but mostly in Vegas.

0:01:53
So we have a glorified janitor in the room.

0:01:55
Yes. I actually designed the things that the janitors clean, kind of. Nah, a couple of steps above what they claim.

0:02:02
Oh, okay, okay, okay. Nah, I'm just joking around. So let's back up. So, college, how was your, tell me about your experience through college. I mean, we met in college, first year of school.

0:02:11
Yep, yep. Before COVID, I had a lot of fun in college, actually, but I guess, going in depth on that, before college, I started here straight out of the gate, civil engineering. I knew pretty, pretty concretely what I wanted to do going into it. So started at civil engineering, moved into the dorms with a buddy of mine from high school, which was a great idea. If you have a friend that wants to go to the same college as you, definitely consider dorming with them because every person I know, bar one, that had a random roommate ended up hating them at some point or another. So it worked out pretty well that way and met Mana and like our first, or maybe like, it was like a few weeks into it, but it's the first class of the day, first semester. So we met pretty early on. And then our friendship blossomed from there, which was the most important part of college anyway. But other than that, a lot of math, a lot of science, got the gen eds out of the way, but then engineering, that schooling was getting, was pretty tough, but it was engaging and it was fun. It was meeting some good people and then COVID hit and kind of made everything really boring and really tedious, but it helped with collaboration, quote unquote, with my classmates so we can get through the rest of the coursework fairly easy. A little bit of over collaboration. Over collaboration, yeah. And then kind of just rode out the rest of college as COVID was kind of easing up towards the end of, when did I graduate? 2021, so fall 2021 was when I graduated. And yeah, straight out of there, went straight into working full-time at that first company I mentioned, and then only a really two-month break for studying, which I was working, I was studying about six hours a day anyway, so I didn't really feel like a vacation at all.

0:03:52
Dang, dude. Well, so, break down your college experience, sort of, right, so you're saying you took a lot of these math classes to go to HNN classes.

0:03:59
Did you feel like these math classes,

0:04:01
like, so I mean, when I think of engineering, I think of like, okay, you're working with systems, right, a lot, and so, do you do a lot of math in your job? Like, did that really help you, put it in quotes?

0:04:11
Funny enough, the extent of math, as far as a civil engineer, at least in my role, because I'm doing a lot of, at this point, it's what's, I use a software, basically, all day that's called AutoCAD, or Civil 3D, more specifically, and if anybody's familiar, if you're not familiar with it, it's basically just the software that people use to draw up like construction plans or Utility utility plans and there are other softwares I get into like if you're a mechanical engineer, which is like more of like More more so like at least in the water wastewater area like the pumps and the pipe networks like that's they would use other softwares But for me with sybils is more of like getting everything in the ground and getting the sites prepared. So it's very static and things don't move, but I think I'm kind of getting in the weeds here. But AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and Civil 3D is the software I use for 95% of my work. Just kind of drawing, either designing, a little bit of designing some of the utilities we're doing, either storm drains or sewers, kind of moving them around, placing them in or putting in the surrounding utilities so we're not running into anything and for digging into the ground or tearing up some roadway to do a project. We don't wanna come across a gas line and shut off gas for everybody. So a lot of that's what I'm drawing. And in all of that, I do basically elementary school math. Either like addition, subtraction, or division, or whatever. But a lot of the mental load when it comes to engineering is just kind of balancing all of these different facets of how everything interplays together in your head. That's really the biggest mental load, again, that an engineer really has to face most of the time. And even in the more technical fields of engineering, or even in the higher up civil stuff that I'll eventually get into, programs will do that for you. I mean, it's helpful to know in college that we've, like what we learned, like a class called statics, which is kind of like how forces act on rigid bodies, like bridges and concrete and stuff like that. Or there's dynamics and you're kind of figuring out like gear ratios and things moving and centrifugal force. Or I'm just trying to, it's already kind of falling out of my head because I haven't used it at all. Or then you have the higher level calculus, like the, you never use a triple integral ever in your life, unless you're doing. What about a single integral? Even I have an integral, really. I mean, area under a curve, I don't think I've ever really, again, that's just kind of basic kind of just logic thinking. Right, right. You have a pipe that has like 80 gallons a minute for 80 minutes. You have to figure out, it's nothing like that.

0:07:00
What about a rope swinging back and forth?

0:07:01
Yeah, nothing like that. Physics, I mean, none of that came through. Maybe like with physics one, or actually physics two, like electromagnetism and fluid dynamics. I mean, that kind of is a little useful just to think of the overall concept. Just water flows downstream and if it's in parallel or if it's in series and then you can just kind of visualize it that way. But again, nothing super technical as far as the math of the science is concerned. But having that as a base knowledge so that you're at least understanding the overall concept of what you're doing, that's where it really comes into play.

0:07:35
Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. Also, you mentioned a lot of the hard knowledge, like the math and the physics and that kind of stuff, like the equations per se, the calculations they have to do, some of them by computer. So how important is it to know how to use a computer? Do you use AutoCAD every single day?

0:07:54
How crucial is that for a student to learn? Especially with AutoCAD, as far as, again, I guess civil is concerned, it's kind of, I'm starting to realize it kind of sounds a little boring, but then as far as I think any engineering and any probably career you get into at some point, you have to kind of earn your stripes. You have to do the grunt work at first. And with civils, with civil engineers, again, like if I can boil it down very simply, it's like civil engineers deal with things that don't move. So roads, bridges, pipe, and like sewers and other things, and then like just putting the actual utility in the ground and making sure it's not too it's not too deep It's not too high and it's not conflicting with anything and then you have mechanical engineers that deal with pump systems and moving systems so like like automotive and aerospace there's a lot of mechanicals in there and then as well as Like HVAC a lot of thermodynamics and stuff like that you have electrical engineers that design like they may not miss they might design, again, like the power lines that are going over and then how they tie into the building and the circuit breakers and how it feeds into all the major devices within the development. And then you have like your chemical and your nuclear and your very super specialized ones. But as far as civil mechanical electricals are concerned, that's kind of basically what they do. And then AutoCAD, civil is like, your AutoCAD's gonna be your base, your foundation from which every other program you use.

0:09:17
It's like Excel for accounting.

0:09:19
Basically, yeah. As a first year graduate accounting student, you're going to be doing Excel all day until you eventually tell the next guy after you've done your time, your few years, you're going to tell the next intern behind you to do all the grunt work Excel so you can do the fun stuff or the more advanced macro level stuff. And that's kind of what my position is as a civil engineer right now. Like the civil engineers in training that are like either just below getting their professional engineering license, or have already had it for a few years. They're the ones that might do the calculations to think that maybe the pipe should go this way, or maybe the pipe should go that way, or they kind of are doing a lot of the more project management stuff. But again, they start to delegate work down to their lower peers. And then again, my position, that's kind of what I'm doing.

0:10:06
Is that sort of the threshold? Like the PE exam is like, so can you explain a little bit like the exam process?

0:10:11
The PE exam is basically just call it, it's just everything you learned in college. And then plus a little bit of, as far as civil as a concern, just incorporating a little bit of real world codes and standards into it. And then a little bit of the logic and how all that plays together. And there is no you know, there's no CAD question on on on the PE exam is more of, you know, and one question that I always remember because I just got so lucky that I found it like on my last pass through in the exam, it was like, what's the minimum turning radius on a on a standard SU-90 truck in blah, blah, blah. Like and then you just had to there's one code book that had the that standard truck size and it gave you the minimum turning radius and it's like boom there it is and that was for a transportation focused PE exam for the civil there's with each engineering discipline the the PE exam differs but for civils in particular there's like five different sections you can either do like construction transportation water geotech and then maybe one other I'm forgetting but uh and then you can, there's a little bit, a few questions that are specialized towards that, and then a bunch of general ones, kind of like, there would be like, what's the integral, what's the basic integral, so they can, they're just testing your math, they're gonna test your problem solving, and stuff like that, but nothing, nothing, there's, they split it up into a depth and breadth. Depth being the transportation stuff, the breadth being your calculus, your statics, your dynamics, all the stuff that you learned in college, just kind of like a basic few questions on each of them just to make sure you remembered it all.

0:11:46
Wow, that's pretty intense. And so, like you said, so the exam is like, is that like a rite of passage sort of, for like, I'm no longer grunt, I'm gonna do the cool stuff?

0:11:55
Basically, so what a PE allows you to do is, once you pass the exam and do four years of work experience underneath somebody that has their PE license, that's when you can start stamping plans. And when you're stamping something, that means you're telling the city or the entity that you're or the client that you're working for is like, all right, this is structurally sound, this is not going to conflict with anything, this isn't going to collapse, this isn't going to kill anybody, this is good stuff, you can put it in the ground or you can construct it. And that's basically where you start to make the real money as far as I'm concerned. If you stay at the level that I'm at, or you never pass the exam, or you don't ever bother, or whatever, then you'll stay as a drafter. Again, that's basically what I am now, is a drafter. I have CAD. Someone tells me, hey, we need a plan that shows these 200 points, and we need to show it in a plan view and a profile view, meaning a top-down versus a side-to-side, and you just kind of, nothing is like too terribly complicated on a macro level, but figuring out how to get it done in the software does take a lot of time, takes a lot of effort, so that's why they kind of pawn it off on the new guys to do it, or the young guys to do it, and then once you do that, and you get good enough at that, then you're at least understand what workload, what the workload will be when you start delegating that same task to the next guy behind you.

0:13:17
Makes sense, makes sense. And so do you feel like what you learned in school kind of prepared you for the exam well, or do you feel like you needed to study a lot more on top of it, or how was that process?

0:13:25
I'd say it prepared me fairly well, and it definitely, Nevada is unique in the fact that it allows you to take this exam early, as opposed to taking it after you've done your four years, which most states are like that. Most states, you graduate college and if you stick with engineering, then you ideally work underneath another civil engineer or another engineer of whatever discipline you're in for four years. And then once you have the prerequisite four years, then you're allowed to start registering for that test.

0:13:56
Really?

0:13:57
It's harder because then you're out of school for much longer.

0:13:58
Which is so much harder because you're now four years out of it, you've forgotten most of the stuff that you don't use, if you even use any of it at all. Some people start starting families, start getting responsibilities and stuff, and that was kind of the experience I saw a lot of people having, like browsing forums, like how do you answer this question, or where can I get this book for free, or where can I do this, and all these people were just like, I've tried three times, and it's hard to balance it with the kids, and blah, blah, blah. Me, I was very fortunate that I took it early and just got it out of the way. And doing it early, I definitely felt college prepared me because again, it's like each one of those subjects, like I saw this in CE 450, I saw this in CE 242, I saw this in CE whatever. But I'd probably forgotten how to do an actual problem and you had to refresh, you got to dust the cobwebs off and go along that way. But you still have it either way.

0:14:45
Exactly.

0:14:45
Well, that's great. And do you feel like, okay, so there's the aspect of the exam, right? Like, you feel like college really prepared you for the exam, but also, do you think college actually prepared you, did it prepare you for like what the job actually is?

0:14:56
It didn't prepare you for what the job is at all. It prepares you for the exam, but it definitely doesn't prepare you for the test, it definitely prepares you for the exam, it does not prepare you for the job at all, because again, there is, you have no idea what you don't know, and that's definitely what I felt going into the, going into the working world is kind of like, there's so many different ways that the government agencies talk with consultants, which is what our job position is, and there's very, and there's like how the contracts work, and how the specifications work, and how you're supposed to do everything, and there's, and then again, like the technical aspects of actually how to get the things done, like let's say on CAD, for instance, like they set the, each client will set the project up with a certain template and you have to follow each, you have to follow all these standards. And then when you're following the standards, you have to, you know, you're sending it to your clients in certain ways and then it's all, like there's so much things that I don't even know. Again, like I just, at this point I'm just kind of like, tell me what to do. I'll just be a good little monkey and put it into, put it into the computer and then I'll send it back to whoever needs, send it back to the person that needs to get it to where it needs to go. That's really kind of where it is. There's so much that you have no, I don't think anybody would have any idea until you're in it for quite a while, which again, is just how the nature of a field like this. Like you need to do a lot of it so you can get a broad understanding before you can start making real decisions.

0:16:18
And so is there a culture, like with that in mind, is there a culture like within the workforce, like within the professional world that like, okay, these guys just graduated from college, she doesn't know anything. Are they like patient with you? Are they, do they know that you don't know? And so like what?

0:16:31
Um, I would say so. And this company, I think it's probably become more and more common, but maybe like a lot of, and this is the case with a lot of like professional industries, especially the construction related is that a lot of the old guys are retiring and they're not necessarily getting enough new people to fill the shoes of the guys that are leaving. And I just noticed that, you know, the, the old people, I don't really interface, my circle of people that I interface with on a day-to-day basis is pretty small, and those people are all very understanding because I think they're within 10 years of my age, so they're all, you know, have had their license for a few years and they, I think, still understand it. And I think that's probably the case with most, and that's just by nature of being away from the cutting edge or being away from the ground floor of anything for so long you'll eventually lose touch. But I think any even the the older people I've interfaced with they've all been they've all been pretty nice but I haven't had any deadlines to meet for them so who knows if they're who knows if they're

0:17:25
real hard asses or not but I don't know. Gotcha and so what is your day-to-day like exactly what do you do when you go to work what do you do? I get to the

0:17:35
office I put my lunch in the fridge I sit down and I click away on CAD for about four hours. I eat lunch, and I go back and I sit at my computer and do CAD for about four more hours, and then I leave. It's kind of how it's going right now. And there's pros and cons to that. I mean, again, I'm learning so much about this software that it's insane that I had no idea how to use even. Like I used it as part of an internship when I was in college for like a year or so and even I thought it was good at it then but then there's so many facets of that program that I've learned as a result of doing it every day which is a positive and then another positive and a negative depending on how you look at it is that because I'm stuck in the office doing one thing all day like it can get kind of boring you get tedious but then it allows you to have the energy to kind of do things that you enjoy when you leave the office. If you're doing something that's like super intense or maybe even on your on your feet or doing something super again like in a super intense work environment that drains a lot of energy then you kind of go home and you're like all right well I'm gonna eat dinner I'm gonna go to bed but with engineering or at least engineering as it is now being a CAD monkey that I am it's kind of like all right get in there do my eight hours and I can leave and I got the whole rest of the day which is again such a great contrast between college and in the working world is that you have, you actually have a lot of free time if you budget it correctly or in, again, assuming your commute to and from the office is in an hour, which is getting less and less common with work from home and stuff like that, which this kind of job definitely allows you to do. I mean, as a new guy, they're still kind of wanting you to be in the office a little bit more just in case you have questions or whatever. But at this point, I mean, no one's really in the office anyway, so sooner or later I think I could definitely transition to working from home either half-time or full-time if I wanted to, but I enjoy getting out of the house. I'd go kind of stir crazy if I was staring at the same four walls every day. Well, I'm staring at the same eight walls in my house versus the office, but good to see some people, some friends I have, like my friend that got me the job works there so we can banter and stuff. That's cool.

0:19:33
Do you guys have lunch together and stuff, too? Yeah, or at least once a week.

0:19:35
Other times, we just kind of eat at the desk, get it over with, and get going. That's really cool. Well, you mentioned having an internship during college. Do you want to talk about how you got the internship? I had several internships during college. So the first one that I maintained up from the start of freshman year until the start of COVID was an undergraduate research position. And I got that really just through serendipity if I'm using that word correctly. A professor had noted, I guess, maybe like looks through the incoming list of freshmen going into civil engineering and she had noticed I had decent grades. So she actually sent me a... You had decent grades? Apparently.

0:20:16
I'm not hard of believing that.

0:20:17
She reached out to me probably like within the first week or even before college and she was like, hey do you want to take a tour of the lab? I was wondering if you want to become an undergraduate research assistant and I said of course and got to a lab looked cool and you know they're offering to pay me pay me money to do stuff that I'd be studying so it's definitely a no-brainer and stuck with that doing water quality I was helping with water quality experience and and then that I was basically a glorified dishwasher for most of it but I mean I was washing kind of you know lab testing equipment and like your time basically. Yeah, again, that's kind of the case with any young person going through the motions. And it's like, so again, like rinsing the test vial, sometimes running some tests, like some water contaminant tests, running like nitrate and chlorine and bromium, again, it's been already a few years. So again, running some water quality tests on different contaminants within water. And I did a couple of collections, like going through the wash, and yeah, the Las Vegas wash, and other areas and collecting water samples. But again, like the graduate student would do more, like the heavy lifting, like the macro, like the actual engineering and the science behind it, while I just kind of facilitated it. But again, it was good money, especially before the inflation kicked in and everything is three times as expensive as it used to be. So I was making good money at the time. It kept me busy and it was also in my field. So it looked great on a resume even though they didn't know I was washing dishes.

0:21:45
Well, what about in the field then? You got one in the field, right, too?

0:21:48
Well, then I get this-

0:21:50
Did you work in the summer one summer?

0:21:51
Oh, I mean, and then I had internships before college at the Las Vegas Valley Water District. There I was doing mostly warehousing and that was honestly just as a mental break from, you know, I was studying engineering and design at the tech school I was going to in high school and I studied engineering going into college. So going into a warehouse job for the summer was just kind of a nice change of pace so I can kind of turn my brain off, get a break. But then that did transition into, again, the summer right before, the summer before COVID, I was doing surveying. I was doing a lot of surveying and right of way work.

0:22:21
Ground surveying.

0:22:22
Yeah, so guys that had like the tripods going in the middle of the road and kind of like doing their laser and looking at, you know, trying to find monuments in the ground like those. If you ever look on, sometimes sidewalk mostly in the road, like these, like pins that are made out of, like, I don't know, like tin or brass or something that kind of... A little flag, little pink flag or something. Yeah, no, like the brass kind of looks like a little washer or something.

0:22:43
Oh, yeah, yeah.

0:22:44
And there, you're really not going to find them unless you really know what to look for. things that the Bureau of Land Management and the professional land surveyors or whatever, they put those in for legal reasons. All right, so we have parcels of land and blah, blah, blah, getting too far into it. I did that for a summer. But then another internship I had was doing drainage and engineering, which again, was a lot of CAD, but it was a lot of what they're called drainage studies. So it's like, all right, water is coming in, rain would come in over the valleys, like how much water is gonna build up at this point in the site, and it's like do we need to add in any infrastructure to mitigate it? So I was doing that, and then I think that was about the last internship I actually had until I went into work.

0:23:25
How important is it to have an internship

0:23:26
when you're in the field? I mean, that was, I think, getting that first internship probably just kicked the door wide open when it came to getting the next one. I think the first one's probably the hardest, because somebody's taking a chance on you to get into the field is probably the hardest thing. But once you've had one and you've done it for a considerable amount of time, I think if you can hold down an internship for like a year, that's a good enough time to where any future employer can notice, all right, this guy's competent enough to where he can hold it down for a decent enough time and people weren't kicking him around because he was useless.

0:23:55
Well, and not only that, but like you said, for you it was a really good opportunity because you got to start at school as an undergraduate researcher.

0:24:02
Yeah, and then the commute was nothing. I just skated over there from the dorm and then did my stuff and went right back and did homework or whatever. So, yeah, no, it was super convenient, getting especially an internship on campus. And again, like college is one of the, for all of college's faults, that's one of the great things about it is that it allows you to be in close proximity to the people doing real work in your field that you're interested in. And if you can meet the right person or do well enough to get noticed, or just be perspicacious enough to get after it, then absolutely it'll be a great benefit.

0:24:33
Totally, I think the best part about college is just that it's a place where there's so much opportunity and if you just seek it out, you'll find it.

0:24:40
Yeah, you just have to go out and get out and grab it, really, that's really all it is. If you sit in your dorm and do nothing all day, then you get out what you put in.

0:24:47
Exactly, and I mean, it seems like you put in quite a bit with your internships, with your classes and stuff, and look at you, you know, you passed your exam and first try. I mean, people don't pass on their first try usually.

0:24:59
Yeah, very.

0:24:59
Especially not at 23.

0:25:00
I think the pass rate, especially, I opted to try and take one of the easier exams because I just, I didn't need to.

0:25:07
I mean.

0:25:08
Yeah, and the thing is, like, once you're, as long as you pass an exam within that field, especially civil, because that's, I think, the only one where there's multiple or if not whatever but as long as you pass one then you can transition that into anything and yeah I picked the easiest one and I think that one only even had a 60% pass rate on the first on the first go around and then even less on the second so yeah no it was nice to get that out of the way and I do have a few other you know engineering friends that are out and about in the world right now either working or still in school doing graduate. And then most of them aren't anywhere close to even like starting to study for it. I had to put in, again, I think it was like, you know, six hours a day for two months, so that's like four weeks apiece. I think it ended up being probably, you know, a few hundred hours of studying. And then again, if you're having to split that up, two hours here, three hours there, sometimes on the weekends, that'll take forever.

0:25:58
Right, and plus the study you were doing was structured too, which makes a big difference.

0:26:01
Yeah, yeah, I definitely tried to break it down by starting at the wide concept and then narrowing it down. Also, I start here and I start at this point every day and I'm gonna end at this point every day. It's like a job. You gotta get a chapter done, you gotta get 20 problems done, you gotta get whatever and then just keep hitting that and then schedule the exams. Now I have a definite time frame

0:26:21
that I need to keep it going. So with your personal achievements in mind, what kind of advice would you give to students that are sort of getting through an engineering degree or looking to get into the workforce? Well I guess as far as

0:26:32
getting the degree, I'm sure if you haven't, if you haven't already, then you are truly a lost soul. Get a Chegg account, make sure you have the $15 a month to spare on that because that will greatly expedite your process of obtaining the degree first off. But then once you get it, definitely, definitely make sure, I hope you can at least get one internship before you're done, but even so, like engineering is a very in-demand type of field, be it civil or mechanical, those are the two majors. I think you will always be in need, basically in any major city that you go to for sure. So as long as you keep decent enough grades, then you can, well, decent enough grades to get the degree done in a reasonable amount of time, then you'll be totally fine getting an internship. But gotta get, experience is key in this industry, more so than kind of the name on your, the name on the college on your resume, for sure.

0:27:28
So like, get through the degree, get some experience.

0:27:30
Absolutely.

0:27:31
And so, how important, this is the last question I'll ask you because, you know, in the interest of time, but how important is it to network and are you on LinkedIn? Do you use LinkedIn? Is that an engine?

0:27:41
I used it more so. I'm probably a little late on using LinkedIn because again, I got lucky enough to where I actually, I had an in on the one internship and even the second internship where I was doing drainage. That's because my roommate's dad was a civil engineer and then he had a civil engineering friend that had his own business and he was looking for interns. So yeah, I think networking is actually probably the most important because as long as you have a competent understanding of the field you're in, so once you get there, you won't screw up. As long as you have that in place, then networking is definitely the most important part because you can be the smartest engineer in the world, but if no one ever sees your resume and or no one's grabbed by it, then they won't care. No one will ever hire you. No one will hire you to experience the greatness that you've possessed. That you supposedly possess. That you supposedly possess, yeah. So absolutely networking. And then, again, college is a great spot for that because even the first job I got out of college was because another civil engineering friend's mom was hiring, like her mom's company was hiring interns and then she just like posted it out to all the engineers, like, hey, does anybody need a job over the summer? Mom's company's hiring. And boom, boom, boom, like five of us got hired. Wow. And only five of us, you know, five of us apply and then five of us got hired and it's like boom. And so again, just, you know, meet the people that are in your degree. Someone somewhere is going to get a foot in the door. Someone somewhere is going to have an acquaintance or a parent or a guardian, whatever. Someone's going to have something that will get you that foot in the door. I think that's the most important thing. Like joining the rat race and then just being another resume in the pile is definitely, you're selling yourself short. If you can find, what is it? Being a medium fish in a small pond is better than being a big fish in a huge pond or something. You want to, Max, you want to tailor your endeavors to where you're encountering the least resistance. And the path to least resistance and to getting a higher up position in any field is having a foot in the door.

0:29:34
Yeah, and knowing someone who knows something.

0:29:36
Exactly.

0:29:37
Andy, I really appreciate you coming in. It was a pleasure. Chatting with me and giving me so much information and everybody else, sharing your wisdom in general. And so thank you so much, man.

0:29:46
Pleasure.

0:29:47
Thanks for having me.

0:29:48
Thanks so much for listening to The Job Forum. If you want any more details or have any questions, visit my website at manaziz.com. M-A-N-A-Z-I-Z.com. M-A-N-A-Z-I-Z.com.

0:30:00
Welcome to The Job Forum.

Transcribed with Cockatoo