ARE CENG AND IENG EQUAL IN STATUS

Re filtering out non-graduates: It's not just software though, there's the human filters as well  The only solution I know is apply, apply, apply. And, as all advisors on recruitment would say, try to make contact with actual engineering managers rather than HR staff.


And make as many personal contacts as you possibly can. The job market genuinely is a totally unfair "old boy's club" (it's called the free market ) where huge numbers of jobs are "won" by chatting to the right person in the bar before the jobs are even advertised. From the recruiter's side there is a genuine advantage to this (apart from saving lots of cash and time), if you take someone on from a personal recommendation you can (if you trust the person making the recommendation) find out the whole back story for the person you're taking on. Whereas people can, and do, blag their way through CVs and interviews. So you want yourself to be somebody who's getting recommendations, then qualifications become far less of an issue. I'm sure people here will start shouting "that's unfair!" - tough, it's very often the way it works.


We're off topic here really, but it's a very important issue - particularly for IEng level engineers who've come up the non-graduate root. I'd strongly recommend two very old but still worthwhile books. "Perfect CV" and "Perfect Interview" by Max Eggert. You may not like what he says, but he describes brilliantly how recruitment actually works and how to work with it.


Final point (which I've said many times here over many many years), a good trick which has worked for me every time I've changed jobs is to apply for a job lower in level than the one you are doing now. In my case, either I was taken on for the job I applied for and then very rapidly promoted (I have never applied for a promotion in my career!) or - in the most recent case - they offered me a higher level job, which I wasn't on paper (but was in practice) qualified for, straight away. May not work for everybody but did for me.


Right, I'm going out into the sun now  Apologies for any typos.


Cheers, Andy

Re filtering out non-graduates: It's not just software though, there's the human filters as well  The only solution I know is apply, apply, apply. And, as all advisors on recruitment would say, try to make contact with actual engineering managers rather than HR staff.


And make as many personal contacts as you possibly can. The job market genuinely is a totally unfair "old boy's club" (it's called the free market ) where huge numbers of jobs are "won" by chatting to the right person in the bar before the jobs are even advertised. From the recruiter's side there is a genuine advantage to this (apart from saving lots of cash and time), if you take someone on from a personal recommendation you can (if you trust the person making the recommendation) find out the whole back story for the person you're taking on. Whereas people can, and do, blag their way through CVs and interviews. So you want yourself to be somebody who's getting recommendations, then qualifications become far less of an issue. I'm sure people here will start shouting "that's unfair!" - tough, it's very often the way it works.


We're off topic here really, but it's a very important issue - particularly for IEng level engineers who've come up the non-graduate root. I'd strongly recommend two very old but still worthwhile books. "Perfect CV" and "Perfect Interview" by Max Eggert. You may not like what he says, but he describes brilliantly how recruitment actually works and how to work with it.


Final point (which I've said many times here over many many years), a good trick which has worked for me every time I've changed jobs is to apply for a job lower in level than the one you are doing now. In my case, either I was taken on for the job I applied for and then very rapidly promoted (I have never applied for a promotion in my career!) or - in the most recent case - they offered me a higher level job, which I wasn't on paper (but was in practice) qualified for, straight away. May not work for everybody but did for me.


Right, I'm going out into the sun now  Apologies for any typos.


Cheers, Andy