A Career Episode Report can well be considered the most significant component of a Competency Demonstration Report. Through this section, the candidate can share a detailed preview of the skills and competencies that he demonstrates within his field of engineering. Especially the skills and competencies earmarked by the CDR assessing authority, Engineers Australia (EA).

For a Career Episode, one needs to identify a relevant incident from amongst many academic or professional experiences that perfectly captures application of specific competency parameters. The candidate can think through a lot of challenging scenarios and pick the best three, to be shared through three Career Episodes individually. Now, this allows the assessor a perfect opportunity to peek into the capabilities of the candidate in his relevant engineering domain across three challenging and unique scenarios.

Since this section is so relevant, it is best to allow experts to take care of Career Episode Writing. The experts at WriteCDR.com bring forth exemplary command over Australian English, which is a pre-requisite for the report. This is strengthened by their rich experience in nuances of professional report writing and expertise in the field of engineering.

5 Important Tips for Career Episode Writing

Our experts at WriteCDR.com understand where you come from and how difficult it is to understand the intricate guidelines on CDR writing. So, they provide certain tips for career episode writing for the candidates from UAE, who are aspiring to apply for a skilled migration visa to Australia. If you can follow these well to the tee, rest assured that the EA assessors will be highly impressed with your CDR.

1. As we understand, every career episode is about demonstrating the knowledge, skills, and competencies that you showcased through different challenging scenarios in your academic or professional journey. Since, the need is to collate three unique career episodes in your report, its best to focus on three scenarios, which occurred during different phases or your life. While you chose a theme, stay focused on the fact that every chosen incident must somehow connect with your chosen field of engineering. And, how well you were able to apply the knowledge and skills in your chosen field. You might look for themes that are relevant to
   1. A significant project that seems relevant to your engineering field and demonstrated some extent of innovation. Here, you can also make use of a relevant scenario from your summer internship.
   2. Or, highlight your contribution to an organizational project. Highlight your role in detail and the competencies and skills that were able to demonstrate.
   3. While you think through what all you could include in a career episode, it is also a wise choice to speak about a technical issue or problem that you helped to resolve. That will prove helpful towards highlighting your problem-solving capabilities.
   4. You might even dedicate a career episode speaking of the role you play in your organizational hierarchy and specify how that allows you a scope to demonstrate your technical or managerial skills.
2. Career Episodes need to be shared from a first-person account, to create a larger impact on the assessor. It is a mirror to your technical prowess and that needs to come across significantly. For instance, you could begin your sentences with “I identified’…’I researched’, etc. instead of elaborating on the generic team contribution. Moreover, per the EA requirements, you would need to have a strong hold over Australian English, because the entire CDR needs to be written using the same.
3. While it’s very human to look out for free CDR samples available online, only just refer them for a quick overview. Do not ever pick an ‘idea’ from the online samples that you see. This is simply because of the fact that Engineers Australia has strict guidelines against plagiarism and you could face a ‘ban’ for one year, even for slight traces of plagiarism in your report.
4. Experts suggest that every one of the three Career Episodes for Engineers Australia must only be 1,000-2,500 words. Be correct and precise with what you share here. EA assessors are not keen for technical jargons or graphical representations or unrequired numbers. Just put in details on how you were able to successfully implement the knowledge and skills in your domain. You can even use the opportunity to share details on any award or recognition in your area.
5. EA requirements on Career Episodes guide you to mark or number every single paragraph of the same in the SS format. For instance, while you work on Career Episode 1, number its paragraphs as 1.1, 1.2…; and for Career Episode 2, you can number them as 2.1, 2.2…etc.

These are further used in the Summary Statement, wherein you can identify and connect specific paragraphs with the competency parameters that you demonstrated.

Essential Sections of a Career Episode

As you search for the best Career Episode Writing Service in UAE, it proves highly beneficial to get expert assistance for the same. Career Episodes aren’t just important, they are extensive in the details that they share and strategic in nature they weave a story to impact the assessor. Experts understand how best you can put forth your candidature in the chosen field and highlight the scenarios which are highly relevant to the domain of engineering that you belong to.

There are four sections that a Career Episode is divided into:

Introduction

Begin your career episode by sharing a brief introduction of about 100 words. Share an insight into what’s going to be elaborated in the following section. You can speak of the purpose and duration of the activity, project details and name your organization. Also, the section could include your position in the company and the location of the project.

Background

As you begin to share details on the project, you need to give a background of about 200-500 words. Speak of the project objectives, relevant engineering domain, and how your role seemed significant. For the latter, you can also share an organogram (organizational chart). In this context, you may also share your detailed job description or official duty statement.

Engineering Activity

This is the section where you detail about the actual work that you were required to perform as an engineer. For this, you can again detail out your role in the team and the engineering tasks allocated to you. Speaking of the path you followed to eventually fulfil the same. This might also include the strategies that you followed towards a successful project completion.

Always remember to highlight any technical issues or concerns that you overcame while performing your role towards project completion, and the ways to resolution. EA assessors have a keen eye for design aspects. So, if the project involved any, do share creative and original design works.

Summary

A Summary to the Career Episode must be crisp, yet effective towards providing a quick overall impression. The assessor must be able to get the message within 50-100 words. The summary must also share details on the success of the project and any reward and recognition that was achieved.

Why do we write Career Episodes in the CDR?

Through the Career Episode Report, Engineers Australia believes that the candidate gets that perfect opportunity to demonstrate and elaborate upon the key areas of knowledge that they possess in the given field of engineering. It is a perfect opportunity to show how their academic and professional background aligns to the requirements of the occupational category that they wish to apply for. So whether the candidate is applying for the position of an associate, professional engineer, or a technologist.

Through every one of the three Career Episodes, you could detail out on how you demonstrate the chosen competencies. As you go through the Migration Skills Assessment booklet in greater details, it is also possible to clearly define how specific competency elements or even the sub-elements were represented in the tasks that you performed.

While the Career Episodes are all important, they are not to furnish irrelevant details about your organization’s market standing, share value, achievements, projects, etc. You can certainly share your job description, to begin with, however, going into elaborate technicalities is something that isn’t required at all. In a Career Episode, it’s also best to skip details on some insider information, details on the respect that your position commanded, etc.

Here, it is best to understand what exactly the EA assessor requires from you, which is

• Initiatives that were taken and results towards achieving certain project targets
• Your actions and strategies to reach there
• While you were aiming for the desired results, what all competencies that you demonstrated through your actions
• You might go in details with all competency elements or sub-elements that you displayed

Your CDR report is not about vague stories. It is more about sharing details of exact action steps that led you to achieve success with your target. To help the assessor understand the exact scenario, you can share your role in greater details and share specific problem areas, along with steps that you took to overcome the same. For instance, you can share details like:

“While doing the initial market study with the prototype, it was observed that the tolerance levels were lower than required, per the actual design specification. I couldn’t figure out the actual error in the circuit design, to begin with and devised a comprehensive series of tests to figure out the same. Here, we assessed input parameters at all point individually to zero-in on the core area of error. Eventually we were able to assess that it was actually the vibration, which was impacting the input transducer.

I took lead to replace the transducer, with one that had better specifications and redesigned the control circuitry. This helped accommodate the new transducer well. Thereupon, a second level of testing was performed by me until we met the design specifications we were looking for.

As you close the Career Episode, while drafting the Summary Statement, you could relate every paragraph of the Career Episode with related elements or sub-elements of the competencies relevant to the Occupational Category that you applied for.

Language Nuances to Remember

It isn’t just about using perfect English, as you work on your CDR. It is more about understanding the expectations and drafting the report accordingly. So, even though you are perfect with Australian English, you need to be well adept at writing from a first-person account and using the active voice as you do it. Yes, the way to write matters a lot and certainly adds more weight to your claims in the Career Episodes. Moreover, it takes away irrelevant focus from the team tasks or organizational achievements to only ‘your achievements’. So keep the emphasis on ‘I designed’, ‘I drafted’, ‘I researched’, etc.

EA assessors have a keen eye for detail and are greatly impressed with a prescriptive style of writing. For instance, they would like you to elaborate on all claims with facts or details pertaining to your engineering domain.

However, all your effort can go in vain, if there is nothing you can do to substantiate your claims. Therefore, it’s advisable to share only those areas of knowledge or skills, which have perfect evidencing to support your claims. Moreover, EA is averse to plagiarism. As you scroll through unauthorised online portals in search of samples to write your Career Episodes, you can be in for a yearlong ban. The content and ideas, all of them should be original and not copied.

While everybody understands that most projects are accomplished through team efforts, the Career Episodes are only focused on your part of that team role. So do not get lost with that.

Along with sharing the skills and competencies that you showcased to get the task done, you can also speak of initiatives that helped you bond with the team members. It’s a perfect package when technical prowess is well supported by good people skills.