Your CDR includes three Career Episodes. This guide brings together our tips on writing them, from choosing the right projects to covering the competencies Engineers Australia expects.
Choosing the right projects
Say you have taken part in several projects and you don’t know which ones suit your Career Episodes best. Choose the projects that cover the majority of the responsibilities described in your ANZSCO code description.
At the same time, the projects you describe need to cover as many competencies from your Summary Statement as possible. The indicators for each Occupational Category are described in the Engineers Australia guide How to write career episodes and a summary statement.
Where to start
If you don’t know how to approach writing your Career Episodes, start from the beginning: the Introduction and Background sections are quite straightforward. The Engineers Australia guide describes what to include in these sections.
The hardest part of a Career Episode is the Personal Engineering Activity. The Background section requires a statement of your duties, which can usually be copied from your CV and adjusted. You can then write the Personal Engineering Activity by expanding each of these duties, making sure that design-related activities are described particularly well.
Representing your design experience
Along with describing your design experience, include the professional software you used for design and documentation, the calculations you made for the design, and the drawings you produced.
Next, think about significant problem situations you faced in your work and describe one or two major ones in your Career Episodes, together with the solutions you found. These could relate to the technical side of your work, to the project as a whole, to its financial side, or to any other significant problem you faced.
Writing style: “I” language, active voice and paragraph numbering
The most important technicality is to write your Career Episodes in “I” language. Describe the work you personally carried out, and avoid “we” or “our” or keep them to a minimum. When you describe teamwork, give a short background of the team’s work and then describe in detail the part you carried out personally, using “I”.
Avoid the passive voice and always use the active voice. Passive: “The X work was carried out.” Active: “I carried out the X work.”
Number your paragraphs as Engineers Australia requires. Its guide explains the numbering.
Other competencies to demonstrate
As an engineer, especially if you are applying as a Professional Engineer, you also need to show that you:
- Adhere to relevant legislation and standards
- Work as a team player: participate in meetings, give professional advice to subordinates and take advice from seniors when issues arise
- Undertake your own competency development: take part in professional courses and seminars
- Prepare technical documentation, such as work progress reports
- Are involved in financial decisions related to the project
- Prepare a project plan or schedule for your part of the project and follow it
The general rule is that all elements in the Summary Statement need to be covered by your Career Episodes jointly. It is better to demonstrate the majority of the competencies in each Career Episode, and the three together must cover all the elements in the Summary Statement.
Need help with your Career Episodes?
If you would rather have them written for you, our career episode writing services match you with a technical writer from your own engineering field.
