Tips for Selecting Your Discipline

Making career decisions can often feel overwhelming – conducting research to inform your decisions can help reduce that stress. Whether you’re trying to select a discipline, or develop a better understanding of the roles and career paths for the discipline you are already in, here’s eight tips to help you:

1. Read through occupational resources like the Canada Job Bank’s Trend Analysis and ALIS’ OCCinfo for general overviews and insights into common duties, key skills, salary ranges, etc. for the engineering discipline(s) that most interest you.
2. Review our What can I do with a degree in…? discipline sheets for insights into common job titles, research areas, and examples of companies that hire students and graduates. Are you a current student? Check out the expanded versions of these resources under the Discipline Specific Career Exploration section of our Resource Vault.
3. Attend first year nights, industry panels, and networking events to hear from industry and alumni about potential career paths. Find details about upcoming events on the Events Calendar in campusBRIDGE.
4. Leverage LinkedIn: explore where engineering alumni from the University of Alberta work. Also, check out the backgrounds of individuals working at companies and/or in roles that interest you.
5. Talk with potential employers at upcoming career fairs like Careers Day, the ESS Engineering Career Fair, and/or Career++ to learn about the types of engineers that they hire, what they look for when screening applicants, and typical starting points and growth opportunities for engineers.
6. Explore engineering job postings requiring 5, 10, 15+ years of experience in order to get a sense of what appeals to you (and what doesn’t).
7. Conduct informational interviews (a.k.a. career chats) to learn firsthand from those you admire — whether they are senior students or professionals.
8. Reflect on your current and past experiences and identify your interests, likes/dislikes, and strengths. What problems are you most passionate about solving? What courses do you find the most engaging?

Additional information on these strategies, and a curated list of 145+ sites containing career planning and professional development advice, can be accessed by current students in the Engineering Your Career section of our Resource Vault.

_{Last Updated: March 30, 2023}