Employment options for engineering graduates
Your prospects will be immeasurably enhanced if you develop a wide range of skills, interests and contacts to complement your specialist academic knowledge. Keep up to date with developments in the commercial world to develop your business awareness, and get involved in extra-curricular activities to build the competencies that employers look for. Seize opportunities to attend professional development courses.
If you’re planning an academic career, make sure that you participate in and contribute to academic activities such as conferences, committees and outreach programmes. These will develop your transferable skills, build up useful networks and help you to make an impact as a researcher.
Specialist skills alone won’t be enough to secure a job, so soft skills really are important. Use the extra time at university to brush up on competences such as organisation and planning, communication, teamwork, presentation skills, commercial awareness and writing. If you are still in university, then make the most of its facilities while you have access: attend any modules in professional skills training, network at conferences, teach undergraduates and master some basic business software skills at the computing centre.
Engineering graduates possess skills equipping them for many different careers. Within engineering itself, there are three main categories of work: aerospace; agricultural machinery; and process engineering and instrumentation. These service a multitude of sectors from electronics to food and drink.
The construction industry especially seeks civil and structural, electrical, mechanical and environmental disciplines. Graduates can work in a range of environments, including construction sites, niche consultancies and public sector bodies, and responsibilities vary accordingly.
