Fresh Starts on Greener Grass

By Jim Montague, Executive Editor

Every day, hour and moment offers a chance to try something new and make improvements, but the New Year is still the most popular time to make resolutions—and Controlglobal.com can help them stick. 

For example, many process control engineers may want to use post-holiday slack time to check on job opportunities, while their supervisors might want to see who's available to fill some slots. Accessible via our website's "jobs" tab, Control Connection is a career resource for process automation professionals, which includes a smorgasbord of more than 2500 job listings and almost 300 resumes. This section allows job seekers to view jobs, post resumes anonymously and create alerts to help manage their searches. Likewise, it also allows employers to post jobs, find recruiting tools and set up an account to organize their own searches.   

A quick scan of the almost 1900 engineering-related jobs available in December revealed a bunch of cool-sounding positions, including:

• SIS controls engineer in Bellingham, Wa.
• Wastewater treatment plant lead operator in Fort Meade, Md.,
• Senior process piping design specialist in Houston,
• Manufacturing/process engineer in Springfield, Mass.,
• Oil and gas upstream project manager in Anchorage, Alaska, and
• Senior project controls professional in Calgary, Alberta.

In addition, Control Connection has an Editorial Bytes career resource center with many articles, including results of Control's salary surveys, where to seek training, economic trends and other job-related information. This page also leads to a Training & Certification Center, which lists more than two dozen online or in-person training courses in process instrumentation from Endress+Hauser; network connectivity from Matrikon OPC; vibration  from Meggitt Sensing Systems; and Profinet from PI North America.

One of the best recent articles in the Editorial Bytes section is "How's Your Fieldbus Resume" by contributing editor John Rezabek, who described many of the skills that process control engineers need for today's available jobs and also detailed the qualifications that employers should request.

Likewise, "Show Me the Money, Part 1" by Greg McMillan and Stan Weiner stresses that engineers must quantify the financial benefits of process control to preserve their jobs.