Editor
The Engineer
As countless reports have pointed out, addressing British industry’s looming skills shortage is a battle that must fought on many fronts.
We need more experienced technicians and engineers to fill pressing gaps in booming sectors. We need to ensure that gender, race and creed aren’t barriers to success. We need to inspire more schoolchildren to consider a career in engineering. And, critically, we need to ensure that engineering students and graduates are made fully aware of the great opportunities awaiting them in industry and aren’t tempted to pursue a career elsewhere.
Which is where we come in.
Over the last few months, The Engineer’s editorial team has been working closely with industry and academia on the development of The Student Engineer, a new website dedicated to students and graduates who are embarking on their first job in engineering.
There are already lots of jobs sites for graduates out there, but – beyond the more enlightened university careers offices – there aren’t too many places for students to go where they can also get the lowdown on what’s happening in the UK’s key sectors, inside advice on how to secure that first job, as well as swap tips and anecdotes with a growing community of fellow job-seekers.
With its lively blend of news, careers advice and, of course, information on the latest job opportunities, we believe The Student Engineer could play a really important role in helping students map out a clearer route into the profession and helping industry to communicate more effectively with the engineers of tomorrow.
If you’re a student or graduate looking for your first job, we hope you’ll find it useful. And if you’re not, we hope you’ll point any future engineers that you might know in our direction.
Visit www.thestudentengineer.co.uk to find out more.
If you’d like information on how The Student Engineer can benefit your company or would like to discuss sponsorship opportunities please contact:
Ben Cogger
ben.cogger@centaurmedia.com
02079704187
For editorial questions and suggestions please contact:
Andrew Wade
andrew.wade@centaurmedia.com
02079704893
I would like to caution all engineers to spend the time to determine if they have been properly cautioned about the underlying assumptions of what they have been taught – some are implicit and not even acknowledged and some may have been explicit but not stressed and may not have sunk in.
Every job built upon assumptions that you may not understand and most jobs fail because we have gone beyond the limits where those assumptions still make sense – our failures are usually not from doing things poorly, but not understanding the limits of what our teaching has taken us. Many of the jobs new engineers will push the limits of what was done before and we are at risk of going past the unknown limits of our tools.
Way back in the mid 1960’s I had to redevelop the equations for the performance of the unusual gearing system used in the Canadarm on the US Space Shuttle – the textbook equations did not fit the data well enough to allow the development of a stable control system. That arm was unusually easy to control using the new equations. It would not have worked as well using textbook formulas. Take care when you push the limits!
Great idea! Is there a place within ‘The Student Engineer’ to harness the mentoring talents of the score or more of ‘grumpy, old, great, ..and a series of other adjectives’ that describe the regular ‘bloggers’ who irritate each other, hopefully in the cause of progress, in The Engineer.
I used to be responsible (in several universities) for reviewing the CVs prepared by students seeking placements. Two elements were almost always absent, when these were first presented.
“Aims and Aspirations.” -the opportunity to show passion and for a student to describe their ‘aims and aspirations’.
[ a university contemporary of mine, in the early 60s, applied to an oil major for a graduate training scheme place. There was a section on the application form which asked -“eventual position sought”. He answered ‘Chairman’ -and he was!
Some other good phrases. “an opportunity to grow into the position and into my career and profession”
“use my present, albeit limited skills and abilities, to further the future of XXXXX plc: and as I become more experienced, take an increasing role in defining what that future might be.[proper management, albeit certainly NOT HR staff, will like this]
The other element too often not considered in CVs is ‘for whom is it being written for’. It is not for the benefit of the candidate, but for the recipient. At one point, I used to get my students to cut a small ‘eye-hole’ in their CV and invite them to look through this, as I read what they had written. Watching the eyes of the reader is about as good a method of seeing which sections appeal and which are glossed over.
As I used to say to students when conducting mock interviews “be very sorry for the other candidates, that they do not have that unique combination of ability and enthusiasm that you have. There is only one person suitable for this post, and they are not such a person!”