If someone Googled for an expert in your field would your name appear on the first page of results? If not, what key words do you need to add to your profile to remedy that?

Currently, most of the people speaking and writing in engineering topics tend to be men. This sets about a succession of activities i.e. the more events a person speaks at, the higher their profile and the more “discoverable” they are to editors (like me) trying to convince them to write. The more a person writes, the more frequently they are invited to speak at events, write books/papers/chapters, and join expert panels and so on and so on.

You are no doubt, familiar with the following statistic: Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the requirements listed, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them. The same is often true for calls for authors, media spokespeople and speakers. I hope that this is improving, but it does speak of a wider issue about women not putting themselves forward.

 

So, I wanted to give some advice for those wanting to get ahead and in turn, help to break this cycle.


My advice is to write. Not necessarily reams and reams straight away, but in the first instance, my advice is to write about your skills. LinkedIn is a great tool and can be very useful for editors etc. to check out potential authors. Unfortunately, quite often I see profiles which say “Engineer, 15 years, Company X” and nothing more.

 

As you will all know, the term “engineer” covers a vast array of professions, (Civil, Electrical, Structural, Mechanical and so on and so on), and it may not be instantly clear whether the person I am looking at has the experience I’m looking for at that time.

 

So, this International Women’s Day, I would like to encourage you to please take the time to enter your skills and experience via LinkedIn, the IET Engineering Communities platform and any other professional online networking groups that you can find. Whether it is paragraphs or bullet points, information about the projects you have worked on or details of any articles you have had published, this will provide exposure to a broader range of individuals, such as; Conference Organisers, Recruitment Agents, individuals looking for Media Spokespeople and, of course, Commissioning Editors like me, hoping to find more women engineers to write technical articles for the E&T Reference http://bit.ly/1ROTPJx .  We are (on the whole) not engineers, so the more information you are able to give us, the more likely it is that we can find you!