in need of IET Fellow to Support my IET Fellow membership application

Hi,

I appreciate the difficulty here, the wording is:

"Your two supporters must be people of recognised repute who know you professionally and can vouch for the evidence you provide. One should be an IET Fellow or a Fellow of any Professional Engineering Institution"

The challenge is "can vouch for the evidence you provide", which is why it needs to be someone who knows you well enough to know that you did what you said you did.

If you absolutely do not have a professional relationship with any fellow of any any UK institution then I suggest you contact fellowship@theiet.org  They are experienced in engaging with people who are in this situation and working to find a way through it.

The one suggestion I would make is that an effective way of gaining potential supporters is to engage in IET activities - or the activities of any of the other UK PEIs. It won't be an instant answer, for the reasons above fellows you meet won't be able to endorse you until they have known you for a while, however it is the way that many of us met our future supporters. 

Thanks,

Andy

Gerard, there may be some across 100k SWEs at Meta, but within my org and the closest orgs (hundreds of people with whom I worked), there are none.

When I asked people around, they mentioned that they'd like to join IET, but there are no referrals in the org :'(

Let's say I worked at Meta in the UK for 5 years. It's a reputable, well-known, hard-to-get industry-leading company with an impact on billions of users worldwide. But I don't see any IET fellows around in the company. It looks like a dead end for the whole industry-leading company getting into IET, unless someone(me in this case) gets into the IET circle.

Hi Artem,

Yes that makes really good sense. That said, I will say that you don't need to get too worried about that way in being fellowship: membership and CEng is just as good a way of getting into the IET - and is much easier. Once you are a member then by getting even slightly involved in the IET it's pretty easy to find supporters for Fellowship if you decide you want it.

The only reason I eventually applied for fellowship was because so many of my friends in the IET kept asking me why I hadn't applied yet!

However, that all said I still agree with you that there needs to be a way that potential fellows can be supported by people other than FIETs - and as Gerard says, as far as I'm aware they can.

Thanks,

Andy 

Artem Kuznetsov said:

they mentioned that they'd like to join IET, but there are no referrals in the org

Hi,

As my other message, you don't need referrals for membership, just suitable qualifications (and money!)

Thanks,

Andy

>> Once you are a member then by getting even slightly involved in the IET it's pretty easy to find supporters for Fellowship if you decide you want it.

I think this will not be easy to use such a supporter. I contacted the IET support to clarify this, and they clearly said that:
1) "both supporters need to be able to verify all provided information within your Fellow application". This means I can't use any work-related contributions with such supporters who are not from my org inside Meta.

2) "You should know them at least two years" - this means I have to wait 2 years until I can use such a supporter even for a public activity. E.g I have a YouTube channel, public articles, public media coverage, I created and led mentoring communities with tens of thousands of participants, but I can't use any of that in my application for at least the next 2 years :'(

I hope there is some logic behind those requirements, but it sounds like an unreasonable limitation for me.

You need to be careful re point #1 as it all depends on which criteria you choose. It may be possible to use FIET extrenal to meta if your evidece is extrrnal to meta. for instance if you sre offering evidence of industry forums or standards bodies etc then people external to meta sre valid people to validate and support you. I know people that have never worked with me but i know them from stanards and projects and i would be more than happy to support them. So its not so black and white. 

Artem Kuznetsov said:

2) "You should know them at least two years" - this means I have to wait 2 years until I can use such a supporter even for a public activity. E.g I have a YouTube channel, public articles, public media coverage, I created and led mentoring communities with tens of thousands of participants, but I can't use any of that in my application for at least the next 2 years :'(

That's not correct either, provided people of standing have known for two years that you have been doing this then that's fine. If they don't then it's back to the point I made above - the point of Fellowship is to recognise those who have made an impact on the industry. If you can show that you have been recognised by leaders in your industry for the last two years then you're eligible for Fellowship, if you can't you're not. That's really the point.

Also it's not about what you've published, publishing stuff is easy these days, it's about whether this has had an actual impact. If it has had an impact, then you should be able to find someone who can say it did.

To try to bring this to conclusion (because it feels like Gerard and I are repeating ourselves here), I would suggest you resubmit with a second supporter who has known your work for two years who is at a responsible level: for example the CEO, CTO or Technical Director or similar of an engineering company, or the chair of a national or international industry committee, or a senior (internationally recognised) academic in your field - basically the sort of people who would clearly be eligible for Fellowship were they to apply. They do not have to be in Meta, but they will need to explain how they are aware of your work.

However I would also strongly suggest, if you haven't already, that before you do this you consult a Fellowship Adviser at the IET to review your application. https://pra.theiet.org/search-advisor  They can also offer an opinion on your choice of second supporter.

spot on andy! 

Andy Millar said:

That's not correct either, provided people of standing have known for two years that you have been doing this then that's fine.

It seems strange to me that the IET support provides completely different information from what you provide here. They clearly said: "You should know them for at least two years". I'm confused about whom I should believe on such qualification questions.

If you don't mind, if you are on the IET committee, can I refer them to your quotes on this (and other) questions?

Hi,

No, I am a trained volunteer Fellowship Adviser (although due to other workload I'm not currently taking on any cases except in my own company) but I hold no committee role in the IET. But anyway, I don't see any contradiction - we're all saying that your supporters need to show that they actually have known that you did what you said you did throughout the period you are providing the evidence for that they are supporting. It really is as simple as that. They need to be able to say: "the applicant is saying they did xxx work with xxx impact from 20xx to 20xx, I knew their work throughout that time and I can support that they did this".

This often needs more than one supporter, for example in my application I needed to use one supporter who had known my work in one period, and another who had known my work in another period. 

Finally, I do not suggest arguing with the IET on points of wording in a Fellowship application. The award of FIET is an honour awarded strictly at the IETs judgement, it is not a right based on "tick boxes". So it is much better to engage with them than to argue with them.

The one quote I am very happy for you to quote on to the IET as my advice to you is this one:

Andy Millar said:

However I would also strongly suggest, if you haven't already, that before you do this you consult a Fellowship Adviser at the IET to review your application. https://pra.theiet.org/search-advisor  They can also offer an opinion on your choice of second supporter.

A Fellowship Adviser can also review the whole application in detail and discuss this in confidence with you. Any advice or guidance on these forums can only be general, and specific cases my differ,

Good luck,

Andy

Hi,

No, I am a trained volunteer Fellowship Adviser (although due to other workload I'm not currently taking on any cases except in my own company) but I hold no committee role in the IET. But anyway, I don't see any contradiction - we're all saying that your supporters need to show that they actually have known that you did what you said you did throughout the period you are providing the evidence for that they are supporting. It really is as simple as that. They need to be able to say: "the applicant is saying they did xxx work with xxx impact from 20xx to 20xx, I knew their work throughout that time and I can support that they did this".

This often needs more than one supporter, for example in my application I needed to use one supporter who had known my work in one period, and another who had known my work in another period. 

Finally, I do not suggest arguing with the IET on points of wording in a Fellowship application. The award of FIET is an honour awarded strictly at the IETs judgement, it is not a right based on "tick boxes". So it is much better to engage with them than to argue with them.

The one quote I am very happy for you to quote on to the IET as my advice to you is this one:

Andy Millar said:

However I would also strongly suggest, if you haven't already, that before you do this you consult a Fellowship Adviser at the IET to review your application. https://pra.theiet.org/search-advisor  They can also offer an opinion on your choice of second supporter.

A Fellowship Adviser can also review the whole application in detail and discuss this in confidence with you. Any advice or guidance on these forums can only be general, and specific cases my differ,

Good luck,

Andy

Andy Millar said:

I don't see any contradiction - we're all saying that your supporters need to show that they actually have known that you did what you said you did throughout the period you are providing the evidence for that they are supporting. It really is as simple as that

No, the IET support team clearly said that this is not enough and that I should professionally and personally know the person for at least 2 years. It's different from what you wrote.

Andy Millar said:

for example in my application I needed to use one supporter who had known my work in one period, and another who had known my work in another period

It seems the process has changed since you applied. They no longer allow sharing verification across supporters, and they ask each supporter to verify all the information.

I asked the IET support team if "each supporter needs to confirm all of the criteria I’m applying under". They clearly answered "Yes, both supporters need to be able to verify all provided information".