How did you GET your job(s)?

[Richard Wallace]

I can't resist the urge to jump in here, because the previous two posters are from my alma mater, good old gatech.edu

Directly or indirectly, Georgia Tech got me every job I have held since 1977, starting as a ChE co-op at Olin Chemicals in Charleston, TN. After that I changed majors to EE, and got another co-op job at Hughes Aircraft in Fullerton, CA. After graduation I interviewed with a half-dozen companies that were recruiting at the Georgia Tech placement center, and took the offer from TRW Defense Systems, a Hughes competitor. A year later I was back on campus at Tech, recruited as a teaching and research assistant by one of my professors. That professsor (Dr. William E. Sayle, who subsequently served a long term as undergraduate director for ECE) introduced me to several of his colleagues in the power electronics research community. One of those (Dr. Richard Hoft) was instrumental in hiring me as a junior faculty member at the University of Missouri, after I completed the Ph.D. at Tech. That was 15 years ago.

Now I work for Emerson. I got this job because Emerson was sponsoring my research program and contacted me to ask if I was interested in joining a new business that they were creating in my technical area, which is electric machines and drives.

JVN told me recently that "it's not who you know or what you know, it's who knows what you know that gets you hired."

JVN is right.