Chartered Engineer 2016

I was awarded CEng by Engineers Ireland recently. I found this thread quite helpful as I was doing my application. I too had heard that if you make it to the interview stage, you are sorted, but having read through this thread, I saw that this is not necessarily the case! So that definitely made me work that little bit harder to give myself the best shot of achieving CEng first go. The thoughts of having to do that all again!!

There's loads of good advice in the thread - here's my tuppence worth for anyone interested:

1. Start on your application early and give yourself loads of time to refine it. I started at the previous deadline (January), for submission by the following one (July). This gives an hour or so a week for you to work on your application, which you will need if you want to do it properly and not have a last minute rush.

2. All the information you need is in the regulations and the guidance notes so I would strongly advise you read them carefully and align your application with them, in order to work most efficiently and clearly show how you meet each of the five competencies.

3. CPD is important for any engineer, but especially CEng. Have yours fully up to date on the website and be familiar with what you wrote. They asked me about mine, which I wasn't expecting. Everything in it was true and accurate and I luckily knew the answers off the top of my head as I had recently compiled it for 2020 so I wasnt caught out by it.

4. I know everyone says this but it's true: Be very very familiar with your written application. It's their template for the interview.

The interview is grand. Mine was like a polite, formal conversation. My suggestions for this:

1. In advance, go through your written application and "ask yourself" to elaborate on every claim you have made about how you meet a competence. Can you comfortably do this from memory? Practice talking about them aloud.
2. I did mine on zoom and I had the guidance notes open in a folder beside me. I had hand-written some examples on the guidance notes to prompt me if I was asked about a particular competence. That worked really well, for me.
3. Your interviewers are volunteers, be sure and thank them for their time at the end.

Update: IM IN THE CLUB 😀

Interview was in November, I found it a bit trickier than I expected. I dont think they questioned me too hard, I think I just expected to be eased into the questioning rather than:

The first question went real deep on stress calcs and challenging why I chose to work from first principles and my selection of methodology, rather than design to a code (Pressure vessel design)

Anyway I recovered after a bit of steady breathing and sips of water and I guess I must have explained my reasoning well enough to satisfy them I wasnt a complete spoofer!

I did find the process for applying through Continous Learning Assessment quite a chore at times, but there was great support from IMechE in the form of online tutorials/events to discuss the procedures and really focus your application. In the end it was quite nice to have a body of work written up to show some of the best work I have done in my career and it does feel like a worthwhile endevour. I also changed job in the middle of my application, so it was great to have everything very fresh in my mind, I felt alot more interview ready than if I hadnt had spent a few months working on my application.