Developing Engineers

Photo courtesy of Abdul Awaes

Over the past few weeks, I was fortunate to travel to the U.A.E. and India as part of my annual visits to these countries. Although I travel to these countries fairly frequently, the pace of change in these countries is somewhat astronomical. In the U.A.E., I visited the City of Gold (Dubai), where new skyscrapers are being erected extremely quickly. The reason for this growth is of course due to the black gold known as oil. After the discovery of several oil deposits in the region in the 70′s, a massive influx of trade and foreign workers that made Dubai grow at an extraordinary rate. Today, the Dubai skyline is filled with state-of-the-art skyscrapers, including the Burj al Khalifa (pictured), that use innovative technologies to ensure they are environmentally friendly.

In India, I visited the Western state of Gujarat, where it was recently announced that the state had secured a massive investment from various organizations totaling Rs.15 lakhs crores (£200bn). A majority of that investment went to the power sector, as Gujarat continues to invest in greener technologies such as wind farms, and solar arrays. Gujarat is also known for its oil refineries, a sector that continues to grow in the region.

Even with the continued investments in both these countries, most of the developments are in the larger cities in the region. This hasn’t stopped development in the rural villages however as charities have taken it upon themselves to help equip and educate rural communities to develop long term low carbon power generation solutions. One of those charities is The British Asian Trust, part of the Prince’s Charities community. One of the initiatives developed by the British Asian Trust was the Barefoot College. The Barefoot College aims to alleviate the problems of frequent droughts, unsafe drinking water, adequate health and education facilities, and power generation. The College also focuses on educating women to become more active members of their societies by putting them in charge of key technologies that will help develop their communities. A case study of how the Barefoot College helped and educated a woman from a small village in Rajasthan to become a Solar Cooker Engineer can be found here.

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.

A few weeks back I told you folks about a job I applied for at a company called Engineering Arts. Well, guess what? That’s right, they called me in for an interview!

Now, so far my track record of being successful during an interview is pretty bad (1-4), so I’m going to need all the help I can get. I’ve spent most of my time searching the interwebz, and found lots of do’s and dont’s, but I want to hear your stories. I’m therefore calling out to all the engineers who have ever been to an interview, to come and share their experiences (and any mind control techniques are always welcome).