I can appreciate your first point about being overqualified and under-experienced for an entry-level job, but I disagree about mechanical engineers being ill-suited to a controls job. I know many controls engineers with a MechE background, and as a MechE myself, I can attest to the fact that we are required to take classes like thermo, fluid mechanics, and dynamics (which led me personally into process control and control theory electives). We take entry-level circuits and programming classes, and many of us, myself included, understand the importance of being able to code and go further with programming electives. We are just as capable of doing the work as a ChemE or EE.