[rajib kar]

Hi

[rodandy12]

I'm an R&D engineer in academia. Here, the goal is to get customers willing to fund research. In the auto industry, my guess would be that the best long term goal is to get to be a "guru" in a particular technical area. Unless you already have some technical area in mind, a good strategy is to try and work in as many different areas as you can. The idea here is that if you are just beginning a career, you probably aren't familiar with much of the industry. Try to find some area you enjoy. Also, don't worry too much if the area you find isn't tightly related to the area in which you were academically trained. It seems very few people in research these days are working in their academic specialty.

Hope this helps.