Making industry connections on LinkedIn helped Vignesh Viswanath impress the bosses of motorsport engineering firm KW Special Projects.
A much talked-about shortage of engineers doesn’t guarantee you’ll walk straight out of university into a graduate job. And if you’re trying to break into a competitive industry like motorsport, finding a suitable role can be a particular struggle.
Six months after he’d finished his master’s in motorsport engineering at Oxford Brookes University, Vignesh Viswanath was considering going back to India. Even with work experience placements at an automotive manufacturer and a research institution on his CV, he was battling just to get a job interview.
‘I was doing retail jobs just to pay the bills,’ he says. ‘It’s very demotivating and a grind. Every day you apply for jobs and most of the time you don’t even hear back.’
Vinny knew he couldn’t just focus on the big F1 teams so he began writing to as many firms in the industry supply chain as he could, looking at companies supporting the other ranks of motorsport. His breakthrough came while using LinkedIn to look for potential employers when he came across co-founder of KW Motorsport, Kieron Salter.
The veteran engineer accepted an invitation to connect on the social network and Vinny wrote a letter offering his skills. Shortly after, sister company KW Special Projects advertised a graduate role and Vinny wrote again, this time being rewarded with a job offer.
Today, he is an automation and controls engineer for the company, which specialises in adapting motorsport innovations for other industries, from aerospace to pharmaceuticals.
As a small company, KWSP has given Vinny the chance to play an important role in a variety of projects. His first tasks were designing the casing and developing software for a medical printer. Three years later his current position is as project engineer for a wind tunnel technology targeted at the professional sports industry.
‘Doing different projects in different fields means we have to take on other things and adapt,’ he says. ‘That’s part of why I like working here. It’s very varied and not everyday is the same. You don’t just finish a project and go back and do the same thing again. The whole thing is different.
‘If I’m doing a project work I’ll be creating specifications, talking to our design engineers, writing documentation or doing research into how to solve the problem in a more efficient way. If it’s not so busy I can be doing training, learning new skills depending on what projects we have in the pipeline.’
His experience of job hunting means Vinny has a clear message for engineering students. ‘You need to be persistent and not give up. Starting your job search early while you’re in uni helps quite a lot – it doesn’t matter if you don’t have your final grade.
‘Getting real work and hands-on experience is very helpful. A placement year gives you a good feel of what the day-to-day job is like not just the glamour of the industry. In motorsport it’s great to be working with the race team and travelling to all sorts of places but the other side of it is coping with jet lag and coming to work the next day.’
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I applaud Vinny’s approach. I once had a student who was a very keen skier and wanted to make her career in the design of ski-lifts and ski equipment generally, etc. Being from the UK was not a good start as the majority of firms who design and manufacture such are European. I suggested that she ‘look round the issue’ -a technique I had proposed during my lectures: and that she took a job as a rep/washer-up in a prestige resort. Here she quickly became involved with those ‘in-the-know’ of this highly specialized area. She started to meet technicians and mechanics, design Engineers from several manufacturers. I am delighted to report that she now works for one of the majors.
I do believe that sometimes the direct approach to anything can be counterproductive. There is always a ‘way-in’ to any field: not necessarily by banging loudly on the front door!
I have met graduates that have spent a year without work only to be drafted into a grad scheme and to be given such highly demanding tasks as taking notes in meetings and creating power point slides for presentations to senior management. Even worked with one grad that was given the job title “research and development engineer” only he was involved with translating the manuals into his native language. There is NO engineering in engineering in this country anymore, the amount of incompetent is jaw dropping! I met one senior engineer that couldn’t even work out that if a component is speced to a certain current capacity that this is only valid in a certain temperature range?! Even though it might not be stated on the datasheet it will be the case! Oh he was on a salary of over 100k, utter idiots from top to bottom. The ONLY reason why there are any engineering firms in the uk today is due to past history of previous attachievements and the high cost of entry into the industry reduces the competitors.