• Skill Adaptation: This may depend on the industry, but I have to deal with version control and document management for everything.  Software, designs, documents and so on.  Documents are all reviewed and signed off.  If the industry uses formal requirements, then these also need to be maintained, flowed down and tested against.
• Job Search Strategies: Things were probably different in my day.  But I mostly used the university's career resources to find job opportunities, then went to interviews.
• Work Environment Differences: As above, the need for everything to be formally recorded.   And QA will be checking on you.  No long university holidays.  Delivering stuff to customers is the main drive.  R&D is more D than R; the aim is to develop products you can sell.
• Professional Development: Keeping pace with evolving industry trends is overrated.  This year's trend will be obsolete in 5 years.  Learn what you need to know.

I'd probably add a bit about team work - academic tends to be about showing what you can do - industry is more about what the team/company can deliver.

Likewise information sources can be a lot less formal - there will most likely be no well organised company library or internet source that can provide information about the internals of products the company produces or the systems you're working with. There will likely be a lot more of scavenging of information from scattered (and often out of date) sources, or finding someone who knows and picking their brains directly.

   - Andy.

I'd absolutely second all Andy and Simon's points, other crucial differences are scope, time and money. Clients want projects delivered to their scope, to their budget, and - this can be the greatest shock - to their timescales. So showing a level of commercial awareness - that you are used to keeping to a strict scope and timescales - is crucial. 

Back in pre-lockdown days, I'll always remember interviewing an ex-post-doc for a permanent industry position, and we were rather taken aback when they said "I'd be happy to come into the office one, or maybe even two days a week". We realised we had to gently explain that this was a 7.5 hour a day, 5 day a week job as part of a team, not just another in a series of academic research projects.

Good luck!

Andy

Hello Usman:

My advice is a little different from the earlier replies:

1-"Electrical Engineering" is a pretty wide subject, so you have probably concentrated into one or two areas for your masters- examples telecommunications or maybe power.

The first step is to determine your "worth" at this moment --- research the number of pounds or dollars etc.you should be asking for, at the geographical locations you may work at.

2.- Research the top (say 10) company leaders in those areas and find out their physical locations.

3 - Take courses in marketing and legal ethics. You have to learn to sell both yourself and possible products in an ethical manner.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay Florida USA