My name's Ewan Henry,
I'm the senior careers advisor for the Faculty of Engineering.
So our service focuses on two main areas.
I think the first one is very much an internal question.
We help students develop an understanding of who they are
and kind of what their values, principles are, what their strengths
are, what their weaknesses are, what they might need to develop.
And it's all with a view to helping them
work out what they want to do next, after study in terms of a career.
So the second area that we work on them with is the external picture.
So what's the market?
What's the labor market?
What's happening in the external kind of world
and what sort of jobs are out there that might be a good fit for them
and trying to help them
navigate this kind of what's quite a big decision.
We do this through various ways.
We do appointments,
we do a lot of events, we do networking sessions, we do careers fairs,
but basically we support in any way we can to help
students kind of work out that future for them.
For us, the employer partnership side of things is incredibly important.
We try and bring employers in as much as we possibly can.
Now that can come through numerous different event types that we have.
We have industry spotlight events, we have networking events,
we have employer presentations, we have careers fairs.
We also have skills workshops that employers
will come and support on.
So throughout a course or in academic year,
there are hundreds of opportunities to either network or meet employers.
I think it is just,
it's part of our philosophy that we don't want to work in isolation,
We want to work with industry and create those links for people.
So in terms of skills development, we look at two main areas.
I think the first one is
how to get a job and the second one is how to be successful in that job.
And we loosely call that recruitability and employability.
In terms of recruitability,
it's things like application support,
how to do a good CV, how to do a good covering letter,
how to do a good interview, you know, those sorts of things
in terms of how you actually practically get a position.
The employability side is a little bit broader and that is
how do I what skills do I need to be successful in the workplace?
And obviously for an engineering student, a large proportion of that is
going to be technical so you're getting that on course.
But there's also, from conversations that we have with our industry and employer
partners, that it's about a wider
skill set that you need to be successful in the modern workplace.
Things like emotional intelligence, things like communication, presentation skills.
So we have a range of workshops
and resources that are available to help develop that side.
The idea being that post-graduation, you don't just secure the role,
but you do well quickly and you can develop your career.
Most of our graduates do go into engineering.
We have graduates in
most main sectors to be honest; automotive, aerospace,
defense, energy, space, you know,
a whole range of different destinations.
Obviously, that depends a little bit to a degree on the specific degree
that the student has chosen.
Some industries
are more accessible to different degree types.
But yeah, we definitely have people that go outside of that.
You don't have to be an engineer because you've got an engineering degree.
And actually we found that a lot of industries are very receptive
and very respectful of engineering degrees and STEM in general.
So I think the big thing about engineering
is outside of the technical, it teaches you how to think.
Teaches you a way to think that's very logical, very problem solved focused.
And this goes down really well in sectors
like management, consultancy, finance, banking,
you know, a whole other
range of industries where actually they really like hiring engineers.
So top three
pieces of advice.
I think one, be curious.
I think mindset
is incredibly important alongside your technical skills.
And I think if you're curious,
if you're always asking questions, it sets you up very nicely.
I think when, especially from a career perspective,
trying to plot the route that you, what the right route for you
to take in terms of a career,
I think the more information that you can gather, I think the more
questions you can ask, the easier that decision making process becomes.
And once you're in the workplace, always be asking questions.
It's the best way to learn.
Number two, be proactive.
I think a mistake
that a lot of people make is they think that their career will grow for them.
And actually, you've got to you've got to grow it yourself.
So look for opportunities to be proactive.
It's what employers are looking for as well.
It's the behaviours that they want to see in staff and potential hires.
So, you know, demonstrating
that proactivity is an incredibly important thing to do.
Now, if that sounds a little bit abstract,
you know, we can support with how that, you know, what that looks like
from a job hunt perspective and also from a kind of work perspective.
And I think the third one is talk to people.
There's no such thing as a natural networker.
It is a learned skill.
And I think it's something that can be seen quite scary for a lot of people.
But once you understand it's just talking to other people, it'ss
one of the most important skills in the workplace.
You know, looking for opportunities to widen your network.
That's how you get on the best projects.
That's how you get on,
you know, the things that no one else sort of heard about necessarily.
So I think that's a really important skill to develop
whilst you're at university because it's a safe place to do it.
And we can provide training and we can provide support
and all those different sorts of things.
It'll set you up very nicely for your career.