CEng Application - Anybody with RECENT experience of the whole process?

Agreed, i didnt prepare very well for the interview as i was a cancellation, therefore a little flustered, the interviewers were clearly asking questions to get the correct response to satisfy the Engineering Councils requirements, obviously on my side with no trick questions as mentioned. 


good luck

Graham,

Absolutely agree. We choose who we place in positions of power over us. However, in the context of a career, how others - particularly superiors - perceive/respect/control us can be significant. Pressure to conform/submit can be a significant factor. In these respects, I learned that CEng is consistent with any other career milestone. For us as individuals, the value of CEng, or IET membership, is only what we choose to give it.


Jason,

My final submitted section J was just over 2.5 pages. This was after 15 years of full-time work experience, post graduation. Personally, I am wary of too much focus on length. I would focus primarily on establishing whether you have included sufficient evidence of competence to a sufficient level as per UKSPEC. If that's not clear to you, seek advice.

I would expect interviewers to raise any concerns they may have during the interview so they can be addressed by the candidate, rather than saving them for the post interview review, but this hasn't been my experience. Maybe I was just unlucky. I believe they are also largely drawn from corporate industry and have trouble appreciating how small and microbusinesses work. The IET considers an "SME" to be less than 250 employees, whereas I'd consider any business with over say 25 to be quite a large enterprise. The mindsets within these small businesses is quite different to those of a large enterprise.

Not sure what you mean Alex Barrett. How do you think you were hard done by. The interviewers job is to assess the material and answers against criteria. Interviewers challenge and probe giving every opportunity for candidates to speak and give evidence. Quite often the response to a specific 'give me a specific example' gets either the example or waffle. Its not the interviewers fault in the candidate either does not have evidence or is underprepared.


People often think they have to be stars at everything. Not true. There are 5 core criteria and candidates are usually strong in 1 or 2 and weak in at least 1..


As for size. I don't see that. I have worked in very small to very large and many interviewers have. Its not about the size, its about what the candidate actually does and how creative, innovative and technical they are.

My concern is with being marked down for things that could easily have been raised during the interview and addressed. I have often observed on local committees the different mindsets of corporate engineers against microbusiness engineers. I would never claim to be perfect, neither would I believe this process to be infallible.

I can see both sides of this discussion. Quite late on in my interview, one of the interviewers told me "you're in the wrong institution". This was a statement, not a question. Perhaps it was intended to give me an opportunity to justify myself. At the time, as far as I remember, I choked up. Was I supposed to disagree and provoke some kind of existential argument? I had thought I was there to elaborate on the evidence in my application and discuss my future career development.


Both interviewers had seemed pretty unfamiliar with the detail of my application at various points. They may not have been aware that I was chair of an IET Technical Network, which might have validated my membership to some extent. As a fellow volunteer I had some sympathy for their position and still do.


On reflection afterwards, I remain confused. On one hand, the interview was a success, so the system prevailed. On the other hand, maybe the system failed by enabling an interviewer with attitudes unfit for the modern IET to remain in such a position of power. A third option would be that the particular interviewer was correct in his view about me, but was argued out by the other panel members who were blinded by the brave new interdisciplinary world, which often seems so out of step with reality.


All in all, my path to CEng was long, hard and costly. But I still urge anyone who aspires to full professional standing to work towards the registration category of your choice and not compromise on your goal. My present volunteering priority is in support of that aspiration.

Geoff,


If my opinion means anything, the IET is 100% the right PEI for you. Straight from the horse's mouth:

"The IET is one of the world’s largest engineering institutions with Over 167,000 members in 127 countries. It is also the most multidisciplinary – to reflect the increasingly diverse nature of engineering in the 21st century"


Source: http://www.theiet.org/about/ 


As far as I can tell, if you're an engineer, technician, technologist or even someone who is simply interested in engineering (that's why I'm a member) then the IET can be your home if you want it to be!