Look at job adverts for some good pointers on what people are looking for. And don't forget to search for "junior" positions, you may have to suck up a hit on the salary for a little while.
Go on some sort of job site and search for "PLC" "SCADA" "Systems integration" "automation engineering" and other such terms. Many people have different words to mean the exact same thing.
See what people are looking for. When you see an acronym you don't know what it means, google it. I was out of this game for 10 years, but just got back into it. So I just did what I just suggested. I googled everything I could remember to see what has changed in 10 years. Yeah, nothing substantive has changed in 10 years. (Factories do not like being made obsolete in two years like they are games consoles or something)
Turns out that people call "Signing off" "CFAT" now, the FAT meaning Factory Acceptance Test. In fact almost everything is an acronym ending in FAT. Here's what it means. "This is what we asked for".
Ta-dah.
You won't be able to learn everything, you just won't. But if you can learn enough to blag it at the interview it's enough.
PID loops. Every muppet asks about these at interviews like as though they are some sort of barometer for perfection of control, so read up on those. In practise you'll learn that "3 term control" is rarely needed, but suits love saying it, so you always end up having to use them.
Probably the simplest thing, in the UK, to get into I guess would be a "Systems Integrator", I don't know what they get called in the US, but it's just an automation house that gets jobs, hopefully within a 100 miles of the office mostly, for some sort of control system. Chances are the customer doesn't know what they want, and neither does the systems integrator, but they will sit around a table to find out what the customer wants doing and what the Systems Integrator knows about till they find something that is compatible with both.
This gives you a broad exposure to a lot of commonly used equipment and rarely exposes you to an insane level of detail on a really obscure bit of kit. Learning the ropes this way will take a couple of years. From there... well... depends what you find.
I'm thinking I might go into technical sales support eventually.
Tailor your approach to reflect the kind of company you want to work for. I personally make my CV very attractive to engineers, not managers. I don't want to work at any place where I spend my time working more on my eloquence than my programming.
So my CV does not say "I'm a team player", because frankly, I'm not. Nor does it say I have great people skills, because frankly talking to other people and finding out what they want is a basic human function that many people do all day, every day. If some chump thinks that this is a skill, he's a chump and I don't want to work for him because he's going to be injecting his bone headed thinking into my day every day and I can well do without it.
My CV makes it quite clear, to an engineer with an engineer's mind, that I am a problem solver. I am resourceful, if I don't know the answer, I know how to know the answer. I know I will be sent to grimy, awful, remote, grey, meritless hellholes because that's where factories are, but I know my limits on how much of that I can take in any given month. You're going to be an employee, not a whipping post.
My CV also is quite clear on the subject of safety. Listen, you are going to hear a lot about safety if you get into this game, and I don't want to colour any judgement on that subject so I just snipped everything I just wrote.
But you've got to know that, safety is super important. Nobody else is going to actually look after us, we have to look after ourselves. I was given this advice on day one "Do not put your hands any place you would not put your dick".
Don't just say you think safety is important. Stand up for yourself and be fully ready to walk away if they try to make you do anything that is clearly stupid. Believe this, they will.
But to a manager, with a manager's mind, I am in my CV, disrespectful of hierarchical authority, obtuse, and a political liability. And long may that continue.
If I could go back, I'd learn how to sell pensions instead. Because I've never seen a pensions salesman in a two year old car.
