Please discuss what the most scientific approach should be to undergraduate students’ career planning in chemical engineering! Or what is the reasonable way to do it

I am an undergraduate student. . . The aftermath of the chemical industry boom has reached the chemical sector. . I used to work at a design firm in a private enterprise. . . Then I went to a certain subcontractor. . . I’m at a factory right now. . . It basically took a dive. . .

Not only undergraduates, but postgraduates as well. Try to minimize your involvement in this industry as much as possible, and prepare to change careers at the earliest opportunity.

When it comes to career planning in the chemical industry, everyone has different opinions. Each professional has their own experiences and aspirations, and there are many who think there are no prospects in this industry. In my view, there is no standard answer for career planning. My understanding of it is as follows: if you really want to make a plan, you first need to get to know this industry – what it involves, its working conditions, etc. You also need to understand the different roles within the industry, assess your own personality, and determine which path suits you or which one you’re capable of pursuing. If you really want to take a path for which you currently lack the necessary skills, then you need to develop those skills first. I’ve been working for seven years now, so my experience can serve as a reference. I’ve worked in private companies throughout my career; I started working at an industrial plant after graduating in 2009. After working in shifts for a while, I moved on to projects that were still under construction, where I did all kinds of miscellaneous tasks. My thinking was quite naive at that time. It took about two years for production to become stable, and once that happened, there wasn’t much to do. I found production management uninteresting, so I wanted to move towards research and development. Of course, during those two years I did get some exposure to R&D work. But it turned out that other companies’ R&D efforts weren’t any better than ours. It seems that this path isn’t viable either； So I did something practical – I went to a design firm to work as a designer. Before, I thought tasks like drawing pipes were extremely trivial; those piping diagrams were so complicated that they could drive one crazy, and one had to draw them by hand. After changing my mindset, I joined a small design firm. Of course, I already possessed some of the skills needed for design work before joining; I could handle AutoCAD and Aspen Plus fairly well. By then I had been working for three years, and at the firm I was involved in both process design and piping design. At first, I felt quite fulfilled working as a designer, but unfortunately the salary was very low (it was much less than what I earned in the chemical plant). After two years, I realized that this approach wasn’t sustainable, so I started looking for another way out ； There were too few options, so I almost changed careers (some elders asked me to help them with work that had nothing to do with the chemical industry). Later, I got an opportunity to work in process engineering (without dealing with piping), and I made another choice at that time. By then I could use several simulation software programs; actually, knowing how to use just one of them was sufficient. I was also familiar with the relevant design principles and standards. My personal experience is provided for reference only

One must first master on-site operations and then focus on process design before being promoted to a leadership position.