Jobs for the Major
How this major affects a job search
The great joy of the tech major is that you have both direction and a degree that's useful. We're sorry to paint it so black and white for the liberal arts majors out there, but that's how the job market works. Who cares, though? You're a metallurgical engineer. The world is your oyster. Or your oyster clamp. That's a thing, right? We don't know. We're not metallurgical engineers.
The danger of being a tech major is that it can put blinders on you. Technically minded people can often be so focused on one goal that they forget to check out the field. You have this amazing degree, so you should know just how versatile it is. We're going to be honest here: you're going to be working with metals. It's versatile, but it's not that versatile.
Common Career Fields
Research and Design. Ever watch Frankenstein and think, "That Dr. Frankenstein isn't so bad. He's basically just misunderstood." Well, then research and design, or R&D, is the life for you. Granted, you're not bringing corpses back to life with the power of electricity—that's a different major—but you do get a chance to really figure out what metal can do and then make it do it.
Chemical Metallurgy. Metallurgists help get the metal from the ground and then process it for use. As much as we would like to think that metal comes out of the ground ready to be used, the sad truth is that it needs a whole lot of work. We're pretty sure it involves talking nicely to it, maybe a massage. We're not experts.
Physical Metallurgy. This is all about stressing metal out and seeing what happens. Since metal isn't human, you can't use the same tricks. It's not like you can bury metal under a mountain of credit card debt. No, in this case, it's all about heat and pressure. You're learning all about what metal can do so you can create new products and improve old ones.
Process Metallurgy. This is a hands-on kind of job. Process metallurgists shape and join metal to create new things. Things made out of metal, obviously. You don't weld together a bunch of plates and suddenly get bread. This is our way of telling you not to eat any metal. We probably shouldn't have buried it way back here.
Quality Assurance. After everyone else has made the perfect product, it's quality assurance's job to break it. Doesn't that sound like fun? Think of it as the midpoint of physical and process metallurgy. You're taking a finished thing and then subjecting it to the kind of stresses that should break it. Why would you do this? Because breaking something in the lab is so much better than having it break out in the world.
Education. (Requires a Master's degree or PhD) Not everyone wants to leave the sweet embrace of school. There's no reason to. Not when there's another generation of metallurgists to train. This could be what you're good at, or it could just be a natural fit. In any case, it's a noble place to go, and you'll still have a chance to do fun things in a lab.
Automotive Engineer. This is pretty far from the basics, but also pretty great. In case you're unaware, "automobile" is old person for "car." They had a tragic surplus of syllables back then, so they wanted to use them all up. Cars are made mostly of metal (at least for now), and we need good metallurgists to help design the parts. You want something that will be reliable, high-performance, and won't look like a great, wallowing tub. It's a challenge for any engineer, but one you are perfectly suited for. Plus, you get to work with cars.
Current unemployment of the major
3.9% (Source)Percentage of majors who get a higher degree after college
51%Stats obtained from this source.