8 minute read time.
On Wednesday 18th November the IET Young Professionals Network hosted their first virtual careers event called: Level Up Your Career. Click to read all about the panellists and the kind of advice that was imparted at the event...On Wednesday 18th November the IET Young Professionals Network hosted their first virtual careers event called: Level Up Your Career. This event brought a panel together to speak about their experiences including: who they are, what their current role is, their career journey to today, what they wish they knew at the beginning of their career and other Student/Young Professional friendly advice.

The panel was made of a people at different stages in their career and from different backgrounds. This ranged from Industry to Academia, and from early career to retirement. The diversity of the panel allowed for a very broad range of experience in both their careers and lives. At the end of each of the panellists’ talks, participants submitted questions based on the panellist’s journeys and advice. The panel were as follows:

Hannah Lawrence: Cyber Investigator at GE Aviation

Hannah started preparing for her career at University to make herself stand out on her Internship and Graduate scheme applications, she got heavily involved within the Coventry University REPS System and ultimately became the Engineering, Environment and Computing Faculty Representative; she also joined the IET Young Professionals Coventry and Warwickshire Network, where she became the Junior Vice Chair in her final year of study.

Her career started when she completed her internship at GE Oil and Gas, then later joining Edison Engineering Development Program at GE Aviation after University.  Hannah then spoke of her experiences with rotations within the company, and discovering her passions within the Industry such as software and wanting more opportunities within leadership; this led to her becoming a member of the Cyber Investigation team upon leaving the Graduate Scheme.

Some of her advice ranged from how to find a role you are passionate about within your company, making the most of your opportunities, how to deal with imposter syndrome and getting involved in volunteering.

Vanessa Stanley: Graduate Engineer at Siemens Rail Infrastructure

Like Hannah Lawrence, Vanessa also started her career at University, going through an Internship and Graduate Scheme at Siemens Rail Infrastructure. To ensure she stood out against the competition she became involved in the Coventry University REPS System eventually becoming a Senior Course Representative, played the Violin for the Coventry University Music Theatre Society’s pit band, and joined the IET Young Professionals Coventry and Warwickshire where she became the Chair in her final year of study.

As Vanessa did not know which Industry she wanted to work in or what kind or role she was passionate about, she applied to a Talent Pool within Siemens so that her skills could be matched to the appropriate place. She attended an all-female assessment centre where she was offered an Internship role in Rail Infrastructure. After being offered a graduate role, she also kept in touch with Siemens in her final year of study by completing her dissertation with them. Now she just started her second year on the graduate scheme and completing project work with the Digital Substation Team.

Vanessa’s advice included making the most out of your Internship/Graduate Scheme, dealing with rejection, making sure to get involved in STEM/General Volunteering to give back to the community, and mentoring.

Andrew Tickle: Senior Lecturer at Coventry University

Andrew offered the very unique perspective of having a career in Academia. He explained that his journey began in the second year of his undergraduate degree where he was inspired by his professor as they knew how to motivate a class. He talks about the adversity he faced for deciding his career path at such a young age, and how he stayed motivated during that time. During his Undergraduate Degree he did summer internships to get more of feel for how academia worked, completing various roles int in the laboratories, admin, and publicity which carried on naturally to teaching during the course of his career. Andrew also became involved with the IET Mersey and West Chester Local Network, eventually becoming the Chair of the Young Professionals.

His motivation and passion for academia moved him to complete a Master’s Degree (new in the early 2000’s) and the became enrolled into the PhD program. He spoke about the different strands of academia that you can go into: purely teaching focused (teaching fellow), research (research), or you can go into both at the same time depending on your preference which Andrew went into. Andrew became a research fellow, then a teaching fellow, and this led to him getting a lecturer role at Coventry University.

When it came to his advice, Andrew gave his on the topics of: innovative teaching approaches, dealing with rejection leading on from Vanessa’s advice, work-life balance, and academia-based interviews.

Graham Prebble: Retired Engineer and Company Director

Having a broad range of experience in his career, Graham spoke about his journey. During his education Graham obtained a Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. Career stated in 1986 where he ended up being given two choices after university: go into software or design digital systems, which Graham chose. He spent four years with an American company designing controllers for mainframe computers for storage elements, disks, tapes, SCSI devices, etc.

Then went to a UK company for a further four years where he worked in the military division; this was similar to his previous roles, but instead he was using military-grade components because of harsh environments. This included things for fighter aircraft, submarines, satellite launch systems. After this, Graham move on to GPT to go into telecoms where he worked in a research program for 15 months to develop the very first broadband to home technology demonstrator. He moved within the company to roles to do with chip design and fibre optics.

Graham then became employed at Jaguar Land Rover for three years working on putting on fibre optics into Range Rovers for the infotainment system. After taking a year off, he joined a company that specialised in research programs where they put together consortiums of industrial and academic institutions across Europe, and seeing whether they could make prototypes that could demonstrate future technologies of what was viable. After taking another break, he went back into contract work, working for Myra whining Jaguar Land Rover where he ended up managing a brakes program. Taking retirement after this period, Graham has worked closely with the IET as a Professional Registration Advisor, along with the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Network.

Some of Graham’s advice was about: Job applications, acing interviews, transferable skills, work ethic and work-life balance leading on from Andrew’s advice.

Hannah Harper: Engine Health Monitoring Engineer at Expleo Group

Hannah’s career started from the age of 15, where she did work experience for the Shuttleworth Collection in Bedfordshire. She kept working on the aircraft for them over 8 years, completing her Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Technology from Coventry University in the process. During her time at the University, Hannah became involved in the IET Young Professionals Coventry and Warwickshire Network, becoming the Junior Vice Chair and is now currently the Media Officer.

After finishing her degree, she was employed by Monarch Aircraft Engineering at Birmingham Airport. Hannah  worked as a compliance assistant where she got to speak to engineers and investigate different issues across different teams so that procedural changes could be implemented, until Monarch unfortunately went into administration.

Hannah was then hired by Expleo Group to work full-time at Rolls-Royce in Derby. In her role, Hannah works within the civil aerospace digital sector where the team find solutions to simplify and automate processes; particularly a technology which is a way of monitoring the health of parts within the aircraft engines more accurately by using an algorithm. Everything that happens for the technology that’s been implemented is then reflected in all of the online databases.

The advice that Hannah gave was about: different routes into the industry you can take, networking, and volunteering.

Dāvis Kūma - Founder and Director at Masina ltd

Dāvis was unfortunately unable to join the panel for the evening, however he is available to contact if you are interested to find out more about setting up your own business after University: davis.kuma1@gmail.com

We would like to say a special thank you to our panellists for making this event possible, and for imparting your career knowledge. We hope all who attended found the event enjoyable and useful for your current/future careers!

In case you missed the event and would like to hear the panellists’ full experiences and advice, the full stream is available to watch on our brand new official YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4Olwq98lpY&t=1s

Our next Upcoming Event is our Virtual Christmas Social which is happening on Wednesday 18th December at 18:00. You can find out more and register for the event here: https://communities.theiet.org/communities/events/item/156/596/26599

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We look forward to seeing you at the next event! Thank you very much for reading, Happy Holidays and stay safe during this time.

IET Young Professionals Coventry and Warwickshire