Should I Switch?

For the past 2 weeks, I've been feeling sick & tired. After taking Taka temp job, I hardly had time and energy to look for jobs. After being seriously unwell, I decided to quit 2 days ago, to give myself time to rest & plan for the future.

It has been 2 long months, didn't even get one interview. What's the problem? Resume, cover letter, expected salary or others? I really don't know. I've tried what I can do to modify them. I've even prepared to go the extent of lowering my expected salary to S$2K, although I seriously think I shouldn't have done that. It's sad. Chemical engineers, being among the highest paid, have to suffer a salary which is way below what they're worth for during recession. Based on the NTU Graduate Employment Survey in 2008, the mean gross starting salary (during good times) for fresh chemical engineering graduate is an astounding S$3.2K, even higher than our NUS counterparts! Does it make sense? What jobs did they do actually? I seriously don't know how this recession impacts the starting salary of fresh graduates. But I think reasonably speaking, the reduction should be at most S$500. If reduced by S$1K, I think the companies really go too far. Seriously speaking, do you want to accept a basic pay of S$2K, which after CPF reduces to pathetically little S$1.6K? Then what's the point of spending another 4 years studying so hard for a degree? A poly grad can seriously earn more than that.

It's really discouraging, it's not just about pay. I've spent so much time and effort to prepare myself to be a process/chemical engineer. In the end, although there are quite a few companies hiring process engineers, I didn't even get 1 interview, despite having 2 years of relevant experience as a production technician. Do the companies only want to hire "experienced engineers" during this bad times, because they want to save training costs? I've seen many identical advertisements for process engineers repeatedly advertised during these 2 months & I also applied a few times for it. Does that mean all applicants for that job are not qualified at all? If recruitment agencies are the ones helping to do 1st screening, then do they really understand what is chemical engineering? Can they translate the experience we gained from our internships/jobs to job requirements matches, although it doesn't match the exact words described by actual employers? If the 1st screening is done by employer directly, why they set such stringent requirements? What's the point of insisting on getting people with such a specific experience? It's almost impossible to find an (almost) exact match to fill the vacancy. Why are they so stubborn?

Ok, maybe process engineer jobs are inherently extremely difficult to get during recession. Then what about chemist, technologist, QA/QC engineers, environmental officer, lab officer, research officer, etc.? Also so difficult to get, even for an interview? So what the companies want us to do? Sell insurance, become financial consultant or the headhunter themselves? It sounds so stupid lar.

In these bad times, we're forced to switch fields. Even if we want to switch back again after the economy recovers, the interest may not be there already. So why should we still want to be a process engineer? For what reason, please tell me...