How an online ProfEd course can help young or senior engineering professionals and Master students Design their Next Career Move

If you are a  frequent follower of my blog www.aldertkamp.weblog.tudelft.nl, you can’t have missed my lasting message that we are living in a rapidly changing world and that change is accelerating. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of engineering. Against this moving backdrop it is vital to ensure that everybody has a career where you thrive, feel valued and develop professionally.

In close collaboration with educational engineering researchers of the 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education and consultants of the TU Delft Career Centre,  I have been involved in the development of a six-week online ProfEd course that will be launched January 24th, 2018. We have geared it towards working professionals, no matter what stage of life they are at, and engineering students who are nearing graduation and prepare for the world of work.

We will make the online course available 24/7, so that the participants have access to the discussion forums and the course materials when they want and need it, and can accommodate the course in their busy personal daily schedule. People who have never done an online course before will soon find out that an online community of diverse fellow professional engineers opens up new an unexpected possibilities for learning how to explore the options, design and land your next career move!

What is the course about?

Participants of the online ProfEd course will master a career-thinking model specifically aimed at engineers. It will help them to identify their career challenges and create scenarios that enable them to take the lead in moving your career forward. Whether you are in the early stages of your career or an experienced professional, the benefits of following a systems approach will give any participant a unique advantage when planning and designing your next career move.

Once enrolled, you will work through a five-step career-thinking model, in which you reflect on your personal unique experiences, attitudes and strengths. The participants will define their current career challenge, explore different solutions and walk away with a validated and tailored role that inspires and motivates.

In the course they will:

  • Review their career to date to identify personal strengths and potential.
  • Define current career challenges.
  • Receive expert and peer advice on potential solutions to career challenges.
  • Experiment with ideas to tackle personal career challenges and conduct searches to identify a list of target companies and roles that best suit individual career aspirations.
  • Validate preferred professional roles and test this option so you can make an informed decision.
  • Create an action plan to actualise your individual next career move.

By the end of this course, the participants have learnt to define their next career challenges, use a career-thinking model, create your preferred professional role for now and in the future, get involved with a supportive community to seek feedback and open up possibilities, and develop and evaluate actions for testing personal options.

Professional roles

Various triggers from the professional field of engineering led us to develop this online ProfEd course. One of these triggers was the set of future engineering roles, that was developed by a Think Tank of professional engineers, by looking at trends in engineering, technology and society, thereby considering the knowledge and skills future engineers will need to thrive in these new situations.  These professional roles, that were subject of a previous blogpost, can be used to acquire interesting insights and context for people who want to explore paths for future development, no matter whether they are employed (or looking for employment) as a “routine” professional engineer, a scientific engineer or specialist, an entrepreneurial engineer, or a change agent or influencer.

In the six-week ProfEd course the participants reflect on their unique experiences, attitudes and strengths through a five-step career-thinking model. They define their current or potential career challenges, explore different solutions and walk away with an inspiring validated and tailored role.

More information and registration

Registration is open till 17 January 2018. You can find detailed course information on the website of “Design Your Next Career Move.

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