Analysis of Career Opportunities in the Australian Engineering Sector

This report delves into career opportunities within the Australian engineering industry. It begins with an overview of the sector's growth, highlighting civil and structural engineering as areas of high demand, driven by infrastructure projects. The report then details specific career opportunities, including the high salaries and job vacancies across various states, particularly in civil and mining engineering. It emphasizes the essential hard and soft skills required for engineers, such as communication, project management, and teamwork. Finally, the report outlines realistic career goals, focusing on professional networking, skill development, and career advancement, emphasizing the importance of technical skills, creativity, problem-solving, and communication. The report concludes by referencing several sources to support its findings.

Running Head: CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN
AUSTRALIA
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
Name of the student
Name of the University
Authors note

1CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Discussion........................................................................................................................................2
Overview of the company............................................................................................................2
Career opportunities in the industry............................................................................................3
Skills required..................................................................................................................................3
Career clarity...............................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5
Appendix..........................................................................................................................................7

2CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
Introduction
A career in engineering sector requires special practical and technical skills. Every
industry or society is dependant on the efficient work performed by the engineers. Career
opportunities in the engineering field within Australia has a lot to offer a student because
Australia provides a wide range of engineering coursed to the students to start their career and
gives opportunities to specialise in the choice of your field. Resulting from civil, mechanical,
marine petroleum, mining, electrical, electronics, agriculture, industrial, aerospace, or
biomedical. Australia gives excellent employment prospects to the students seeking career
opportunities in the engineering field (Wipulanusat, Panuwatwanich & Stewart, 2018). The
assignment deals with the research of the career opportunities within the Engineering industry
within Australia. The report analyzes the overview of the engineering companies in Australia,
what are the career opportunities in the sector, skills required for the career and also a realistic
goal of oneself upon graduation.
Discussion
Overview of the company
The engineering sector in Australia is experiencing significant growth, and there is no
sign of slowing down of the industry. The field which is in more demand is the civil and
structural engineering followed by electrical and electronic engineering. The growth is due to the
large scale of the infrastructure. In Australia, there are many public sector infrastructure projects
which require proficient workers. The engineering companies in Australia continues to
strengthen the economy with significant projects. According to one of the reports, the residential

3CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
buildings and the construction sites were proved to be the primary drivers of the economic
growth in Australia. New projects in the field of communications, energy and transport include
massive investment over the years and have also increased the demand for skilled engineers in
the country. Many companies in Australia offer graduate and training programmes to train the
next generation of engineers who desire career advancement in the engineering sector (Bennett
& Male, 2017). Thus, it can be concluded that Australia's engineering sector has growth factors
for the economy.
Career opportunities in the industry
There is a huge demand for engineering jobs in Australia. The development of many
infrastructure projects like Sydney Metro, West gate tunnel and the tunnel in the Melbourne
gives a lot of career opportunities to the engineers (Anderson & Anderson, 2020). Many states
and territory are getting vacancies for engineering jobs, which shows the growth of career
opportunities in the engineering field. Since vacancies indicate the demand for labours in the
economy. Engineering students in Australia are earning high salaries. In Australia, the average
salary for a mechanical engineer is expected to be around $72000 AU (Dowling et al., 2020).
The demand is most robust in the civil engineering profession ("New data shows engineering
jobs market growth in every state and territory | Engineers Australia", 2020). There are a lot of
vacancies for the post of civil engineers in Tasmania and South Australia. According to the
recent report, Western Australia has the most number of jobs for the mining engineer, which
grew significantly over time. The career opportunities for industrial and mechanical engineering
has also grown in Victoria and West Australia (Wipulanusat, Panuwatwanich & Stewart, 2018).

4CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
Skills required
Engineering is one of the growing fields worldwide. To advance in the engineering
career, an individual need to demonstrate hard skills as well as soft skills. Soft skills enable an
individual to interact harmoniously with people, situations and problems. For example,
communication and leadership qualities an engineer should possess to be successful in the career.
Soft skills always complement hard skills. For example, there are many branches of engineering
which require a different skill set for the job. Engineers have to operate in a different industry, so
some skills are important to only some specific industry. One cannot ignore the fact that an
engineer requires technical skill to succeed, and these skills depend on the complexity of the
project, which also requires formal education.
Communication is among one of the skills that an engineer require engineering depends
on the proper communication between the colleagues and an engineer has to interact with the
people outside and inside the field such as clients. Some of the other skills are negotiation, active
listening, motivation, emotional intelligence, stress management and presentation skills.
Engineers have to manage the team and integrate with many departments to meet the
deadline of the projects, so for an engineer, project management skills is a must to succeed in the
career. Some project management skills for an engineer are six sigma training, strategic
management, risk management, critical thinking and quality control. Since engineers have to
work in teams, teamwork and collaboration are some basic skills required for the field (Detsimas
et al., 2016).
Some of the other skills required in the field of engineering are data analytics, creativity,
reasoning, statistics, troubleshooting and inventory management.

5CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
Career clarity
Based on the researches, the realistic career goal for myself upon graduation is very clear.
The goals considered to advance in my engineering career include professional networking
which results in the job offer. Documenting the accomplishments, focusing on leadership and
communication skills, balance the pressure work-life and become an expert in the field. My
career goals would be more focussed on productivity, efficiency, education and personal
development. Becoming an expert in the engineering field after earning a degree would be my
long-term goals. Gaining experience, enhancing and developing the skills that will help in the
accomplishments of my long-term goal. There are some skills which an engineer needs to work
on to succeed in the career. They are technical skills, creativity, problem-solving skills,
teamworking skills, interpersonal communication as well as written and verbal communication,
commercial awareness, pressure handling, stress management, project management are some of
the essential skills, I would work on to succeed in my career goals. But the career goals should
not be limited to only one final results. An individual can have multiple long-term goals. The
important thing to keep in mind is to have a reasonable action plan that will help a student to
achieve and succeed in the career goal.

6CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
References
(2020). Retrieved 2 March 2020, from https://www.seek.com.au/
Anderson, C., & Anderson, C. (2020). Engineering Australian Economic Growth. Retrieved 1
March 2020, from https://studyonline.rmit.edu.au/blog/crucial-role-of-engineering-to-australian-
economic-prosperity
Bennett, D., & Male, S. A. (2017). An Australian study of possible selves perceived by
undergraduate engineering students. European Journal of Engineering Education, 42(6),
603-617.
Detsimas, N., Coffey, V., Sadiqi, Z., & Li, M. (2016). Workplace training and generic and
technical skill development in the Australian construction industry. Journal of
Management Development.
Dowling, D., Hadgraft, R., Carew, A., McCarthy, T., Hargreaves, D., Baillie, C., & Male, S.
(2020). Engineering your future: an Australasian guide. John Wiley & Sons.
Menegon, S. J., Wilson, J. L., Lam, N. T. K., & Gad, E. F. (2017). RC walls in Australia:
reconnaissance survey of industry and literature review of experimental
testing. Australian Journal of Structural Engineering, 18(1), 24-40.
New data shows engineering jobs market growth in every state and territory | Engineers
Australia. (2020). Retrieved 1 March 2020, from
https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/News/new-data-shows-engineering-jobs-market-
growth-every-state-and-territory

7CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
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8CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY WITHIN AUSTRALIA
Appendix