Developing Engineers

The Spring Project in association with Nuclear graduates & STEP are running an employability day solely for Engineers graduates.

This Information came through my mail box 3 days ago and figured it just might be of help to someone. There are 100 places available and takes place on the 20th of November @ Vauxhall, London.

Click here for more details.

Back in the months that my full-time job was looking for a Job, not necessarily full-time, just any job. This once seemingly fruitless mission led to a location just outside Angel tube station, the event, London Graduate Fair @ Business Design Centre, London.

I found out from an email update sent to me by one the recruiters I registered for in 2009 that the fair is again on this year, checking the exhibitor list though, I was disappointed to find only Fidessa, Royal Air Force & Parker Hannifin, the only companies remotely of interest to Engineering graduates.

Over 90 Employers and only 1 – Parker Hannifin, is an Engineering Company, the rest just happen to employ engineers. This company deals with the manufacture of control/motion technologies and it might be worth checking them out, but to say they should be your sole reason for attending this event, frankly I’d have to say your afternoon could be better spent.

… But , the earlier mentioned exhibitors list contains a peculiar, note-worthy mention, Contact Singapore, Waiting to convince you that coming to their country for work could be a brilliant decision.

Yes, I’m suggesting you consider moving to Singapore, not just because the ban on chewing gum has been lifted, but the country is part of the thriving tiger economies and current reports say the country have more Jobs chasing job-seekers.

If you’re a graduate going to this fair, make sure you check their stand out, If you’re staying at home, start pondering on a move to Singapore and you needn’t have to learn a language neither, English is already the language of business in Singapore.

I learnt about the STAR interview technique whilst being part of a programme run by Windsor fellowship that prepared Black and Ethnic minority students near graduation for a career in their chosen field. Now, for those I have confused with the blog title, please grab your copy of ‘The Sun‘ for the latest in the Katie ‘Jordan’ Price vs Peter ‘the abs’ Andre saga.

The beauty of this technique/method is that it also works for the competency based questions of job applications and I’ll advise that when you come up with a good one, save it in a Word document and simply use them for all your job applications (Obviously you might need to adapt it slightly for each application).

An Interview question you will get frequently when applying for Engineering jobs will sound something like: -

“Give me example of when you had to work in a team”

Situation

During my final year at Kingston University I was part of a team of 40 students and a few staff members of the university’s Alumni department.

Task

We were required to ‘cold call’ past students in order to convince them to donate to the University’s ‘Annual Fund’, money raised went towards Scholarship; for students in hardship, talented athletes, and equipping the library. The secondary purpose of this was to inform past students of ongoing events, developments and services available to them which required liaising with staff for up to date information and guidance.

Result

The fundraising campaign raised over £100,000 for the annual fund and I had a personal donation rate of 40%.

Though, this isn’t a perfect example for team working, I’ve given this because it can also be adapted for ‘communication’ questions

Delivery of these words will need to be modified to sound conversational in Interviews.

The following is in no way a journalistic attempt at slapping manipulated stats in your face to argue a point, but a simple analysis between two options. now that we’ve got that out of the way, we begin:-

What attracts a graduate to a company can be boiled down to to 3 things – Money, Benefits & Development.

Money

a £3500 gap between the average salary from an SME and a MNC would seem to back up your preconception that you are better off with a Large company but on futher analysis, putting into consideration tax, student loan & National Insurance.

[Data based on a 5 day working week, when a salary range is quoted an average figure is taken]

[Salary Breakdown from thesalarycalculator.co.uk]

Benefits and other Perks

Any good company regardless of size will offer you a realistically good pension plan and knowing that most engineering companies have turnovers of over £1M there is no reason why they shouldn’t. In the case of other perks of the job, ask yourself, would free gym membership be the reason why you join a company.

Development

An SME might not offer you an elaborate training scheme but just simply allow you to learn by doing and might even throw you in the ‘deep end’ hoping you’ll swim, I work for an SME and this has certainly been the case. I taught myself how to use CATIA amongst other things, after which I was simply allowed to use it in real cases and i am treated as another Engineer, a colleague and not a Graduate Trainee.

If you’ve read this thinking i was going to finish with a statement like – “David (SMEs) beats Goliath yet again”, you will be terribly mistaken as I’ve already proven above. What you will notice is that the gap is not as huge as you have preconceived when you began reading this post.

If all the arguments above still doesn’t seem to convince you to give an SME a chance, consider your alternatives … if you have any.