By now, if you are a Graduate Engineer; you have a log book with you which you need to fill. Many young greenhorns asked me what to jolt inside this log book. A log book is merely a diary which you need to show to your mentor or sponsor what you have learned for each month. It is an essential 'diary' which tracks and records your finding(s) at work. The main thing you need to capture in a log book are special events which somehow increased your understanding of engineering and construction work, anything that shows some progress in your learning curve. Moreover, you need to capture lesson learned or diagnosis-prognosis or postmortem. That is the key to a good logging work. Always clip together drawings, sketches and even hand written notes during a meeting explaining and detailing how issues were tackled and resolved. It would be even be nice to have printed attachments pre- and post-construction of such issues. Address the limitations or constrain or even specification which need to be fulfilled in order to have it constructed to the time, cost and quality required in the contract. Change of design is a great way to demonstrate or illustrate the soundness of your journey in discovering engineering practices. You also can adopt learned skills in the process and how it is helps in mitigating your problem if you want to impress your interviewers as long as it does not show that you are an operator without fundamentals engineering knowledge in operating software. It is also essential to have lesson learned incorporated in your report since this will help you to recall how things are organized and executed during your stint when handling a project in design office or at site. It is also dire important when you are required to compose an essay about your design submission or work experience for the second paper (compliment for the ethic or general essay). To summarize it, don't worry about showing failures. Capitalize on how it is overcome and your learning curve. Remember, your log book is not your resume or co-curricular vitae to shows your job descriptions or duties or responsibilities. These are great but put that aside, it does not impress the interviewers. They probably have like RM2 billion worth of works under their belt while you rookies roughly hit RM50 million. |
PE Interview >