The Career Engineer Blog

I’ve just read the article on today’s news feed discussing how engineers at the University of Nottingham are “set to develop technology that ‘captures’ pollutants and stores them inside rocks.”

This is one way that the UK will help to reduce its CO2 emissions.  However the article does go on to say that “In the UK, one third of CO2 emissions come from power stations…”

I didn’t realise the percentage from power stations were so high.  I do know that there are 248 power stations in the UK.  I also know that if people in the UK stopped using the stand-by’ facility on their TVs and other appliances, we could switch off 2 power stations.  That is fact!  Also if people switched their mobile phone chargers off once their phone was fully charged, another power station could be turned off.  If we completely phase out all energy inneficient bulbs, another two power stations could close.  It is so clear that there is no single big answer to combating climate change.  It is apparent that the way forward is to make lots of small changes.  And as this blog helps demonstrate, we can (and should) all do our bit to help.

RC

Hello!

Been a bit of a lull with the old blogging there.  I haven’t even been away… just haven’t had anything I was desperate to write about.

 Anyway, The Career Engineer is looking great at the moment- the new News Feed is proving a great hit with engineers.  (Any feedback on it do let us know!)  It is also a good help to me as an employee because it keeps me right up to date with what’s happening in the engineering industry and what my clients are up to.

I’ve been pretty busy with the acting the last few months- luckily it’s been mostly weekends.  I’ve been doing walkabout comedy theatre at a load of festivals including Poole, Andover, Salisbury, Reading, Henley Festival and most recently the Larmer Tree Festival which was AWESOME!  It’s on the Dorset/Wiltshire border and had some amazing bands including people like Jools Holland, Dreadzone and a fantastic up and coming folk-rock band from Wales called Mabon.

I’ll next be performing at Regent’s Park next weekend.  Should be a good gig.

The purpose of this entry isn’t just to talk about myself…. honest… no it’s to actually ask YOU what you like about the site, what you’d like to see, what makes you stay and have a look around and to try and glean some feedback from you.  You can contact us by leaving a reply here or by emailing us.

Thank you! RC

Recruiters and applicants alike must have come across some cracking job titles in their time.  It’s critical that the job title is right as it’s the first thing a candidate reads. 

I have found some hilarious ones (not on this site) but in local press and other sites.  Woking Council have a ‘Wheeled Bin Implementation Team’.  Good work there!  I’ve also recently seen “3 Person Company Needs a 4th”.  Obviously.  Functional Consultant is another one I stopped and pondered over for a while. 

You can just imagine two boys in the playground saying, “What does your dad do?” “Oh my dad is a mechanic.  What about yours?”  “Oh my dad is a Flash Ninja”… A Flash Ninja!!  There’s one advertised on our site at the moment.  Brilliant. (search ‘ninja’)

 My personal favourite job title was announced to me by a drunk in a pub in Woolwich.  He drew up his stool and said, “Guess what job I got?”  So, where to start?  We went through all the daft ones we assumed he would be incapable of in his state like MP (maybe he was?), Lorry Driver, Hairdresser etc.. and he finally said, “I am a Vision Technician”.  We presumed this must be to do with TV or film or maybe in a cinema.  No no no.  He was a Window Cleaner.  Excellent.  RC

We’re hearing about climate change more and more in the news, documentaries, parliamentary discussion and from our local councils… but what can we actually do now?  Right now? 

I have spoken to people who’ve decided to adopt the attitude of “Oh, it’s just another way of the government getting money out of us”… right ok, so the fact that Steven Hawking suggested in August that:

“…Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of methane, trapped as hydrates on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so further global warming. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.”

The time to act is now and the attitude of “Oh well, if I leave my computer on it’s not going to make any difference” needs some serious attention.

 Here are a list of simple things you can do and probably should already be doing:

• Turn your thermostat down by 2degrees
• Wash your clothes at 30degress
• Get yourself a carbon neutral bag- or at least re-use the ones from last weeks shopping
• Fill the kettle to the amount of water you need
• Hang out your washing rather than tumble-drying
• Unplug you mobile when it has finished charging
• Car share- it makes travelling to work more enjoyable, and you get days off driving!
• Don’t buy bottled water from abroad- think of how much energy used to get it here- it comes out of the tap!!
• Buy local, seasonal produce- it tastes better and hasn’t been frozen for months travelling around the world!  And you’re supporting our farmers!
• Don’t use domestic flights- by the time you’ve sat waiting at airports it’s not much quicker!
• Don’t buy over packaged food- the shop near mine sells 2 lemons in a polystyrene tray covered in cling film!!  Have a word!!
• Recycle- an obvious one, but look in that bin under your desk.. yeah, thought so!
• Sign up to a green energy supplier- http://www.greenelectricity.org/domestic.html
• Insulate your house- or if building one, look at insulation like sheep’s wool.
• Hire bikes on holiday instead of a car
• Replace your light bulbs with energy efficient ones- power companies are giving these away now!
• Plant a tree - they absorb CO2
• Use washable nappies- the average baby uses 5,353 nappies; for the UK alone, that is the equivalent in weight to 70,000 buses every year!  They take upwards of 100 years to biodegrade!
• Don’t leave your TV on standby; there are 248 power stations in the UK, we wouldn’t need 2 of them if people switched their tellys off! Seriously.

People are starting to do their bit- Haagen Dazs ice cream have now changed the diet of their cows to make them fart less!  This is because methane, as a greenhouse gas, is 20 times worse for the atmosphere than CO2 is.

Do something.  You CAN make a difference.  If we carry on as we are, by 2085 there’ll be no tropical forests, we’ll have lost 50% of our wildlife and there’ll be an additional 1 billion people starving.  Also, the earth’s average temparature will have risen by nearly 3 degrees, doesn’t sound much, but is enough for malaria carrying insects to live quite happily in the UK.

SO, have a think and do something.  Please.

Richard Croughan

Man, I am tired.  This week (Mon-Sun) I will have spent a total of 27 hours on trains and tubes.  I am working here for The Career Engineer in our North London office during the day and then rehearsing/performing in Winchester each evening and weekend.  It will be worth it though as I am performing a range of walkabout theatre, improvisation, comedy and general silliness in a number of places including Salisbury, Forbury, Winchester, Henley and more.

 I am so far (fingers crossed and touch wood for this) really impressed with all my trains being on time and running smoothly.  It’s much better than I anticipated. When you do actually stop and think how many trains are being managed, organised, driven, timetabled, etc etc… it is actually a small miracle.  We’ll all have a good moan when we have to wait longer than 4mins for a tube or if our train is delayed… but overall it is a pretty impressive feat when you think about how many thousands of people commute to and from London each day.

 Rail is becoming an increasingly strong area for us at The Career Engineer.  We are currently working with Westinghouse Rail and Halcrow to help fill their electrical, design, graduate, test and signalling engineer roles.  Response in this area continues to grow for us.  We are also used when needed by Metronet, TubeLines, Alstom, TfL, Atkins Rail and Bombardier who are providing the networks with the latest technologies for testing, signalling, upgrading, design developments and so much more.

I’d just like to add my thank you to all the rail engineers helping keep me on time!

Richard Croughan

The key for engineers finding the most suitable job for them with the most ease is all down to keywords.  Recruiters’ vacancy posts need as many of the most accurate key words in their job specs as possible.  I’ve listed some of the most commonly searched words and phrases in our quicksearch box below:

service engineer
cad
design engineer
maintenance
service engineer
structural engineer
electrical engineer
project manager
mechanical engineer
cnc
quality engineer
electrician
quantity surveyor
fitter
senior
electronics

We often come up against jobs not being found on the site because they don’t contain the necessary key words relating to the role.  Or, in some cases, what one HR manager calls a “senior service manager”, another HR manager would use the phrase “aftersales support manager”; resulting in the job ad not always being found.  So recruiters: really look to make sure you’ve included as many of the most relevant keywords as you can.

As for our candidates, it will be interesting to hear from you to see which search terms you use to find the role you want.  Do you search by entering the software package you have trained in, e.g.: Solidworks?  Or to you always stick to the job title of maybe “software engineer” and trawl through results pages?  Any comments left below will be taken into account when we give help to recruiters and when we amend our search tools.

Richard Croughan.

Despite living in London for nearly four years, I am still amazed at how many people on my train journey to work are always full of cold.  Or so it seems.  Standing, crushed as usual on the train into London Bridge I am surrounded by perpetual sniffers and coughers.  I notice that one person’s cough sets off a chorus of people who cotton on to the idea that they should do the same.  (I presume this works in a similar way to the subconscious reaction to the contagious yawn!)  It’s very apparent that this laryngeal orchestra is made up mostly of the suited commuters.  I really don’t hear it from the construction workers, labourers and engineers sharing the same carriage.  Now, I can only presume that this down to lifestyle.  Are the suits working hellishly long office hours with a long commute at either end, leaving them only enough time at the end of the evening to slouch in front of a South Park repeat with an un-nutritious TV dinner??  Maybe I’m reading too much into it…

Hi, I’m Richard, a member of The Career Engineer’s sales team.  Aside from this I work as an actor and am currently involved with two theatre companies.

The first is The Institute- the resident comedy improvisation group at the magnanimous Canal Café Theatre in Little Venice.  We meet each Sunday to rehearse both long form and short form improvisation.  It is rewardingly refreshing to leave behind the structured office week for a creative and daft environment for four hours at the weekend!  I had done little improvisation work since leaving drama school in Birmingham in 2003 but recently re-visited it at a workshop audition for Wet Picnic; the second theatre company I’m currently working with.

This company focuses more on character acting and we are due to appear in many guises and silly costumes in a number of festivals and plays this year.  More on this in future blogs!  I will keep you up to date with where we’ll be so you can come along and point and laugh.

For anyone involved in theatre and the arts and wanting to ‘get-ahead’ it is so apparent to me now that networking is the absolute key to it.  I first met my friend Sara at an audition and got chatting.  It was Sara who has introduced me to The Institute and I’m confident that this will help lead to something else too.

Were any of our readers at the Monty Python World Record attempt on Monday evening?  Basically, over 5000 people and the West End cast of Spamaot, celebrated St. George’s Day by clip-clopping together two coconut halves in time to the song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life to break the Guinness World Record for the largest coconut orchestra.  Well, the new record has ben oficially set by 5,567 (rather daft yet wonderful) people (including me!)

This now the first blog of many.  I will try and keep up some thread/ storylines to keep you suitably entertained. Richard’s DVD of the week:  Garden
State (Directed by, written by and starring Zach Braff with co star Natalie Portman)

Hi,

I am Nic, the senior developer for The Career Engineer. I will be contributing to this blog from time to time to describe new features or ideas we have had to try and improve your experience on the site.

New Job Search…
We have recently released a new job search method. Once you start typing your search keywords you should see results start to appear. The idea is to streamline the job finding system. Normally you would enter some keywords, click search and see what happens. If the results didn’t suit or there weren’t any you had to try again and again until you got some relevant jobs. Now you get instant feedback, coupled with the ability to further filter by industry, location etc. Previews of the results appear on the right hand bar so you get a “feel” for the type of jobs your search will match.

I am keen to hear back from the Candidates about this new feature. Does it speed up your job searching? Please let me know by voting on the new poll (on the right) and/or commenting on this post.

Coming soon…

We are currently re-developing our jobs by email. The new method will be more tailor-able and more accurate. Also back by popular demand, text versions of the Jobs by email.

Nic

Hi, welcome to the first ever blog entry for The Career Engineer blog. We intend to use this blog to interact directly with our members, both engineering employers and candidates.

We will be adding interesting content related to the engineering industry together with updates on The Career Engineer itself.

If you have any questions or would like to make a contribution make a comment to this post!