Dear Employer!!! I am [Confused]

Thank you for your showing interest in joining us as a potential graduate. After careful consideration, I regret to advice you that we are not taking your application forward. Please note that due to high volume of applications received we are unable to provide individual feedback. However, I am happy to inform you that your CV has been added to our database for any future opportunities. 

DEAR EMPLOYER! WHY AM I BEING REJECTED???

Is it My Degree?

My University?

My skills?

My Experience?

My Location?

But I have everything you asked for? All that is required for the position. What is it that you are looking for? What am I missing?

What do I need to do in order to be selected and work for you?

I am CONFUSED!

Dear Employer! When I was at University / College I have received many Awards and Achievements for my extra-ordinary performance in core-engineering subjects. I am an exceptional mathematician and I was given engineering award by ABC institute. I am interested in the position and I think I am a very competitive candidate as my knowledge about the subject is well developed. I targeted my focus to be the best within the department and invested my full-time on education including my holidays. Is that not enough?

Dear Employer! I got my degree in engineering from ABC University. Department of Engineering at my university maintained its position in top ten for last decade due to the quality of education it provides for its students. I went to one of the highest ranked universities. Is that not enough?

Dear Employer! I have always been a high achiever. I always got high grades when I was at school; when I was at university. I have the University Grades. Is that not enough?

Dear Employer! Every summer, I got myself signed up for activities and work placements. I grabbed every opportunity I got to gain Work Experience working on site, working in offices, paid, even unpaid. Is that not enough?

Dear Employer! I live within your area. My Location is within the commute from the work place, as it was mentioned in the job advert. Is that not enough?

To see what employers base their hiring decision on I started a quick poll, a few months back. “If you were an employer who received a huge amount of equally good applications, how would you narrow them down?” The screen shot of the results is shown below.

Many of you have been let down on several occasions, especially in last few years and have been left with unanswered questions. Being rejected is not a good feeling let apart not knowing why. But you must not let that discourage you because IT IS NOT YOU, OR YOUR DEGREE OR YOUR LOCATION OR YOUR UNIVERSITY. It is the current market conditions. There are a fewer positions in the market with higher demand. In such hard times nothing is enough. You have to look beyond your limits – expand your horizons.

The five things I mentioned above are the most common factors we take into account when we are looking for a position. Am I qualified enough? Have I got a degree from a reputable University? Did I get the best grades I could possibly get? Do I have enough experience required for the position? Do I live nearby?

But what we don’t do is to actually understand what is happening and what the employer is looking for? With the increased level of competition it is even harder to prove that you are the right person. Yes, you do need the right background knowledge (no one is going to trust in you, if you can't trust yourself). Being new graduates, we go through two different phases. 1. Appropriate educational base. If you do not understand the basis you will never know how things are put together. Never think that your education is not important just because the weight has been given to the work-experience. Put in your full effort into getting the right education, yes from a good university (but not just a good university is going to help you). Experience allows developing the skills you gain from academic training. But yes, after a few years in industry your work experience will become more valuable. But due to the current market conditions and graduates, being in the race to win, have skipped those years and requirements are now been modified for entry-level jobs. You are now also required to prove that you not only produce numbers but can also interpret the results into real outcomes. Besides that, you also need an exceptional attitude towards winning. You have to fight ten times harder than people who entered industry some years back. This competitive market has raised the standard of expectations in the industry. You can’t just be good at studies or just have experience. You have to have it all together.

A comment I received for the same polls was, “Good cultural fits are key - get the right people on the bus, then make sure you get them in the right seats - Good to Great”, John Ouellette. This statement is very true. Companies’ prefer people who are a good fit to their culture. You will also have to justify how your skills are transferable to the new type of role they are offering. Before you apply for a position do consider what the the requirements are and be ready to prove how not only what skills you have but also how you can use them for the benefit of the company i.e. valuable in the open market. I would advise you to DO YOUR HOMEWORK - understand what company’s expectations are; understand their core values and vision before you apply for a position. Be ready to answer, “How do you think you fit within the organization” and do not forget to ask their opinion. Ask them what are the weaknesses and strengths of their existing team and see how you fill those gaps and take them in confidence. I believe you must be thinking don’t I need to be there to convince them and for that I need to be invited for an interview. No, you don’t! This is something that can be done as a part of your application system. Think! There are many ways and you need to choose the best one for that particular firm.

Another factor that plays a vital role that I did not include in my survey is ‘PASSION’ - this is what plays a key role when your competitors show the same attributes as you do. Two people can have same qualifications, similar work experience, even extracurricular activities but no other person can have same passion as you do for your career. So be ready if you are asked “Where do you see yourself in next five years?” or “How do you see envision yourself contributing to the business?” Remember work experience is something an employer sees as an illustration of what value you can bring to the company but passion is what makes you unique. And you can show your passion through your extra-curricular activities – relevant or irrelevant. A required set of skills for engineering requires skills such as work ethic, management, peer relations, adaptability, team spirit and leadership abilities that you can develop in many forms. So do it. Another key indicator of how you match them is your goals versus their goals and even if you do not have the right experience, show them you are eager to learn and keep improving.

MORAL:  (EDUCATION + EXPERIENCE + AWARENESS + CAPABILITY + PASSION) is what an employer is looking for. So be ready for it.

“Nothing quite prepares you for actual design work as raw experience”

Some say I know it all – stability, load transfer, structural analysis, behavior of materials, management …  I understood my physics and I know my MATHS!!!! … Do you seriously think, that’s all we need to BECOME AN ENGINEER. But I am gonna say Nope, Not at all. I am a glad you got a degree in Engineering from a highly reputed university, but that’s not enough, Let’s Learn It Now – Learn to Think – Learn to become an Engineer. [Something I learnt through discussion “Challenges faced by the graduates at the start of their career” with David Morris, Principal at Arup].

At many occasions, I have been struck with the question of whether the recent graduates are qualified for the actual work done in the industry? Are they taught the necessary (both hard and soft) skills required to perform in the construction industry? Is the current academic training to become an engineer sufficient to face the challenges waiting ahead? Remember Ronan Point, London in 1968, Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma in 1995, World Trade Centre Towers, New York in 2011, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Washington, in 1940. Are you capable enough to deal with such situations? Capable enough to avoid them!

No! As a new graduate in industry, neither am I and nor are you. Just learning pages and pages of theoretical concepts by heart to clear the exams doesn’t really make you an engineer but it does get you an entry pass into the world of engineering.  Questioning my statement? As an example – how many of you have tried cooking? All of you. Whether it was a successful or unsuccessful attempt, that’s a totally different subject. But when you try something you go and find the best recipe available. No matter how well the recipe is written or how many times you have read it before trying it yourself  – you will not know what will happen in real. Will it turn out tasty? That you will only know once you try it. You will do mistakes and learn from your mistakes – and lessons learnt from the mistakes are not easily forgotten. In the same way you might know what is an ideal w/c ratio for the required strength of concrete but with no experience you will have no feel of reality – because there is no such thing as  IDEAL when it comes to the real world. Structural estimations - anyone can put values in equations and get the values but which value is right and what seems to be the no practical answer is something that is crucial in structural industry and not covered as a part of the academics.

“Structural engineering theory can be taught in the classroom and whilst high standards of functional design can be achieved through this teaching I believe that excellence in structural engineering practice can only be learnt, first hand on the construction site. Seeing ones designs on paper is quite different to seeing them executed on site. Experience of how a structure fits together and more importantly the sequence and procedures of how it is constructed will result in designs that are functional as well as practical. [Andrew Heffer, Senior Structural Engineer, WSP Property and Development]

Loads are applied to the slabs, which sit on the beams; beams are connected to columns; columns take the load down to foundations and foundations transfer them to the ground. This is where the teachings of the university curricula limits – theoretical appreciation and some working knowledge of the basics skills. How??? Is what remains uncovered until you have done it yourself. It is the translation of the skills into the real work situations, application of the academic prowess into the practical design solutions, which is required to bridge the gap between academia and practicality. Remember, “Engineering is a career, which requires your life long devotion towards learning”.

Entry-level structural engineers or graduates are indeed hired based on their academic progress but after some years in the industry – experience gained through in-job-action will account for your credibility. Reasons for the primary causes of engineering failure are mainly related to

·      Human factors (Insufficient knowledge, underestimation of influence, ignorance, forgetfulness etc.)

·      Design flaws

·      Material failures

·      Extreme conditions and environments

This is where experience requirements of the structural engineering become apparent to overcome problems related to varied projects and problems.

‘Your first projects after graduation are 100% learning of new things. After a few projects, you start to build up a ‘feel’ for results and also gain some techniques that have worked/not worked before. You never reach the point where you have learnt everything and it wouldn’t be any fun if you did, but the point at which your confidence grows, based on your experience in reaching good solutions, efficiently and creatively is when you start to feel that you are becoming a better engineer’. [Jane Richards, 
Senior Technical Director, Property & Development]

You will go through many phases of the learning cycle. Early days will bring stage where you will learn from experimentation you will find solutions to your problems by trail and error, choosing many right answers and still not knowing which is practical one.  You will write down every thing for your records. Sooner you will start to collaborate with others, initially with the intensions to learn if what you have done is right or wrong and then to develop your ideas through reflection of their experience to develop you own intuition of practical design. 

‘Being involved with building structures you very soon become aware of the bigger picture: how your structural design fits in with the other disciplines and the client’s drivers. You start out designing in isolation but soon enough you design in collaboration.’ [Matt Goswell, Associate WSP Property and Development]

But the key here is to critically assess and evaluate your performance; examine your skills and make them your asset. I never fail to emphasize the importance of challenging your skills. Working in the culture of sharing experience and willingness to pass on knowledge by the huge wealth of mentors and senior engineers; exposing yourself to new concepts and learning methodologies in practice, getting your hands dirty and recording them not just for yourself but to discuss with your managers, senior engineers and reflecting back at your progress forms continual professional development (more rigorous at the early years btw).  

For all the students and graduates in the next coming years. Please focus on getting as much as possible experience in you bank through internships, work-placements etc. to develop the industrial skills as the market is not in a good condition which means you have a lot more competitive market than the graduates in the last decade or so. Good luck!

MORAL - Let’s Learn It Now – Learn to Think – Learn to become an Engineer. Because nothing quite prepares you for actual design work, as raw experience.

So who exactly am I?

It’s very disappointing to see the lack of awareness by the general public about the engineering in general. I have read many discussions on LinkedIn and seen many Youtube videos, which shows how people don’t really understand who engineers are – in particular structural engineers.

Well! Like everyone else I will not give you a bookish definition of structural engineering. But today I am going to tell you what I enjoy doing and who exactly I am. People like to dream big! But what is the fun if that dream is not changed into reality – that is what I do. Someone dreamt big … as big as Palm Island in Dubai, Great Wall in China, Wembley Stadium in England, Acropolis in Greece, Empire state building in USA, Burj Al Arab in UAE, Kansai International Airport, Eiffel Tower in France, Ice Hotel in Sweden and then someone took the challenge and turned them into reality.

All that is built around you – your house, the place you work at, all that amazing locations where you go for holidays --- bridges, roads, dams and every possible thing that you can think of were once just a thought. You see standing the most amazing iconic structures around the world – and yet you still don’t know the heroes behind them. Such a Shame!!!

I, a structural engineer shape the built environment. For any built structure, Architects designs to do make it pleasing for eye, unique, which fulfills the requirements and relaxes the environment – internally and externally – so we can say an architect makes sure a building is aesthetically pleasing, good for purpose and kind to environment whereas how it will be built or whether its possible to construct or if its not how to make it possible is where a I, structural engineer come in. I enjoy challenging myself, I take responsibility, I like excitement and innovation, what I do is very technical but also creative. I have excellent problem solving and mathematical skills and I need all these to make sure you have a high quality environment to live in. 

I collaborate with many people on regular basis – meet new people and discuss about different projects to collate all information required to make sure what is needed is achieved – I work very close with architects, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, fire engineers, façade engineers and many others in a construction design team, I study plans of the project, understand requirements of the client (owner/person investing money), discuss the possibility and probability of the project, and work hard to produce structural design.

Starting from basic sketches showing ideas of how the building frame resist applied forces acting on it – from the weight of the material, additional load from the permanent furniture or variable loads that will be applied on it  - this depends on the type of structure. Remember, no two buildings are same – they have different challenges due to different constraints and requirements all are met when producing a design and developing it into a set of drawings that are used to construct on site. Imagine if a bridge was designed using criteria for a house (like a house) – will it be able to stand under that load of you car or large vehicles? No not at all. And also against the Mother Nature, pressure from wind and storms, which can topple the building over just like a stack of cards, if not designed properly. I make sure through testing and prove using numerical calculations – not one or two sets but many many sets. It is even more fun with the latest Building Information modeling (BIM) techniques where the whole idea is developed in 3-dimensional format, not only improving the design quality of structures making sure they are even more safe and environmental friendly with less costs.

Then I put together a list of things in form of a specification making sure high standard material is used suitable for the job, adaptable with its surroundings. All is put together in form of detailed drawings that shows each an every thing that is to be built on site with high safety.

I – design, construct, repair, conserve and convert. Yes, I am a proud structural engineer.