Preparing an Effective Search for Civil Engineering Graduate Jobs

The field of civil engineering is one of the oldest in the world dating back to the viaducts and roadways created during the Roman Empire. University students throughout the United Kingdom pursue a civil engineering degree to take advantage of their aptitude for mathematics and their desire for a meaningful career. The influx of foreign professionals into civil engineering firms and public agencies has meant greater competition for new graduates. Your desire to find a civil engineering graduate job immediately after you complete school can be fulfilled with a deliberate job search.

Before you begin filling out applications and heading in for interviews, you need to put together a portfolio that will impress potential employers. You should utilise student projects, sketches and recommendations from former professors to demonstrate your engineering skills. It is also important to contact references in your curriculum vitae to let them know that engineering firms may be making contact on your behalf. Once you have your portfolio completed, you need to build a network of resources to find job openings. Daily investigations of engineering job web-sites allow you to place your name into consideration for dozens of positions with online resume tools. These web-sites are frequented by thousands of engineering candidates and many hiring managers select a limited number of resumes to review.

There are a number of resources you can use to supplement your use of highly-used job web-sites. Civil engineers should look to trade publications and engineering organisations for information on jobs for graduates. These publications have a limited distribution and feature internship and training programmes that are focused on a select audience.

You should look at public libraries and your university's careers office to find free versions of these publications during your job search. You also need to do some legwork in order to find civil engineering graduate jobs with a high amount of potential. A review of an engineering firm's web-site may yield some results but you should also call and send your credentials to a firm's human resources department for future consideration. Many graduates fail to utilise their connections to the engineering field among family, friends and former employers.

You should contact your references as well as friends that have worked in the engineering industry to gain insight into what it takes to get hired. With a few phone calls and e-mails to your natural network of resources, you can find plenty of graduate opportunities in civil engineering.

Mike Sandiford is the Sales Manager at JustClick, who are a leading source of Graduate Jobs and Graduate Careers, also offering a Graduate Lifestyles portal with news and reviews on current affairs.