Your Career

Career Planning and Prospecting

Planning your career is not so easy for many people. There are however, a few things that you might consider doing in order to guide you in making your career decisions. The following are our personal recommendations:

Networking

Through personal experience, networking is a powerful tool and one that can be most beneficial to you for getting yourself to become more confident, increasing your industry awareness, up-to-date project knowledge for both local and national projects, new business mergers/ventures with possible new contracts and prospective employment, consultancy opportunities and a number of other items. Online professional networking facilities such as LinkedIn are also becoming increasingly popular and are also a recommended source of networking.

CV writing

It is so important to have a clear, concise and up-to-date CV. There are two basic facts you must know about CVs - First, you are going to need one, and sescond, no one wil want to read it! According to our reasearch, the average interviewer has never been trained to carry out interviews and probably finds the interview as uncomfortable as you do. To avoid this, CVs are often used to screen people out than screen them in. Some common CV writing tips are (also, see our free CV writing tips e-paper):

It is not always necessary to have your home address, age, marital status, religion and number of dependents detailed onto your CV. Your covering letter will detail your home address in any case. It is a good idea to provide contact information such as your home telephone, mobile and email address. You may also like to add your location eg: Location: Makeni, Lusaka. Contact information should be at the top of your first page. It is also perfectly acceptable to add 'References - available upon request' on to your CV as the last paragraph on your CV.

As a guide, you would expect to see qualifications for a recently graduated engineer or young professional with less than 3 years specific work experience detailed at the beginning of the CV, with work experience following this. For experienced engineering professionals this is the reverse with the detailed experience clearly highlighted followed by qualifications. See our free CV writing tips e-paper for more information and examples.

Once you have completed your CV, why not register it online so that potential employers can view your profile? There are many free facilities out there, and a popular one is Monster!

Professional Networks

As mentioned above, you can also obtain a huge amount of information from our individual Professional Network web pages - specific to industry sector - and start to receive e-bulletins/newsletters of up-to-date information that could potentially be most helpful to you. Consider attending one of their events or perhaps obtaining an exhibitor list for a particular event and then researching the various companies for potential vacancies. If their web sites do not detail vacancies, there is nothing to stop you writing to the companies and forwarding your CV for their consideration, tailoring your experience carefully to meet their product portfolio and business profile. A popular professional networking facility is LinkedIn.

Work placements

Work placements are an excellent way of achieving that initial experience within your field, and many companies recruit all year round. You are do an online search, or contact your careers service to find out if you could obtain a list of companies which are offering work palcements and which you can contact.

Attending Recruitment Fairs and Events where possible is also a good opportunity to find potential employers offering work placements and we would suggest that you take copies of your up-to-date CV with you to pass to the respective companies on the day.

Accredited Company Schemes - for example, a list of these accredited company schemes in the UK, see web link http://www.theiet.org/careers/TrainingOrganisations.cfm

International Students - Work Permits - For example, information regarding applications for UK Work Permits can be found at the following site: www.workingintheuk.gov.uk

Job Researching and planning - Build your own database of contact names and companies and then carry out research from their web sites searching for potential employment and then sending out your CV and covering letter(s) accordingly.

Helpful job web sites
www.jobserve.com
www.monster.com
www.jobsite.co.uk
www.JustEngineers.net
www.insidecareers.co.uk
www.graduate-jobs.com

Employment Agencies

Agencies can assist you in finding employment and tailoring your CV accordingly. You may find your local library or authority will have a list of local employment agencies within your region whom you can contact and arrange to visit. You can also use the internet to search for agencies. Make sure your search criteria is good, for example, : "Electrical engineering jobs +South Africa" or "engineering placements + USA" etc. Criteria search definition is important so that you do not receive masses of unnecessary information.

Professional development

This is a very important area and one that can make a difference to your career in terms of the type of role you apply for, the salary and future career prospects/promotion. Unless you have already done so, there is absolutely no reason why you should not register immediately for professional development to, for example, EngTech, IEng or CEng qualifications. Professional qualifications underpin your commitment to your profession. Incorporated and Chartered Engineersstand apart from all other engineers and are recognised for their level of competence and expertise within their discipline and sector.

Personal Support

There may be times in your career when you are frustrated or feel you have not been treated fairly at work. By joining a professional institution, many offer professional support services for members where free legal, monetary and employment advice are readily available.

Advice usually covers personal matters such as divorce, house purchase queries, court proceedings, debt problems, inheritance/will issues, employment law and redundancy, disciplinary concerns/pending dismissals and final warnings, probate, neighbour/landlord issues. See web page www.ietbenfund.org or telephone the helpline on 0845 685 0685 (UK callers) or +44 20 7344 5498 (outside the UK).

Careers Advisors - Many professional institutions such as the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) are assisted by the valuable work provided by their team of Careers Advisors, all of whom give their time voluntarily to assist other members with career advice on a variety of areas, such as:

" Moving into management
" Career development and re-direction
" Teaching and lecturing
" Early retirementConsultancy
" Self employment/business start up
" Contracting
" Job searching techniques
" Working overseas