Everything you want to know about a Career Episode in a CDR

Drafting a CDR is never easy. The most difficult thing of a CDR is the Career Episodes. Yes, those three career episodes you have to write to prove you have done something worthwhile in your engineering career.

A career episode is to be written in an essay form, in about 1000-2500 words. Each career episode must depict a different scenario, not linked to the other two. You career episode must be in 1st person singular tense. These are the basics of writing a career episode.

But even after knowing all this, many people flunk in writing a good career episode. Well, that is completely understandable. Through a career episode, the Engineers Australia want to check your practical skills.

They want to know how you approach a problem. How analytical your mind is. Not what you have learned in theory, but what you can do in practice.

So, to write a perfect Career Episode, start out with a 100-word introduction. Mention the time and geographical location where the episode took place. Also, mention the name of the organization under which the project was going on, and the position held by you.

Next, give a little background about the project in about 500 words. What the project entails? The nature of the project, the main objective you wanted to achieve and the nature of your work. These are the points that must be covered in this.

Then comes the main body, which you may write in about 1000 words. This must entail full details about the project. Start with your approach to the problem. Give reasons for your approach, and what you hope to achieve from it. Talk about the difficulties you encountered along the way and what you did to overcome them.

Make sure you mention only your contributions and tasks. The Engineers Australia is not interested in what the team did. Rather they want to focus on your contribution and skills.

People often dive deep into the mathematical calculations and formulae, trying to explain the technicalities. Try to stay away from that. Don’t go into the mathematics. Go for the logic. The Engineers Australia is not interested in what you learned in college. They want to know what you can do with that logic. How you approach problems and counter them.

Discuss any strategies devised by you earlier, what changes you had to make to them and how you that affected your plan.

Don’t forget to compare the goals you had set earlier and the result you received in the end. Discuss what other steps you think if you took, things would’ve worked out better.