CAREERTIPS: Journaling to Professional Registration and through my career

Professional Civil Engineering Technician (Pr Eng Techni) Nadine de Mink shares her hardhatCAREERTIP on how she used journaling as a useful tool towards her journey to professional registration and on her overall career journey as a hardhatPROFESSIONAL

Our industry as hardhatPROFESSIONALS is an environment where career success is not measured by direct sales or targeted numbers, you can easily spend months, even years, on one project. This creates a challenge when you seek to determine your value proposition or know when you might be eligible (or even due!) for a raise or promotion

Given this challenge I asked myself this question: How do I make sure that my current job is on track with my growth and development goals? The answer that came up is with a record of facts!

I decided to keep a record of facts through journaling and this is how I do it.

Detailed summary of daily activity

I  write a detailed summary of daily activities. And when I say detailed, I mean every single task. For example, I make bullet points with statements such as: "I Drafted RFQ letter to be sent to potential tenderers" or "I developed and drew details (in CAD) for this project, using another project as reference"

This might seem mundane in the beginning, but keep in mind, it's these little consistent actions that build my experience and need to be conveyed in my application/CV. At the end of the day, I will be interviewed about what I put on paper so I make sure of the following: 

• What I have written should be clear as day (Think "Explain it to me like I'm 5")
• I should understand everything I wrote.

Write in the first person

In the professional space, often there is no place for "I" (especially when writing technical reports), however, I alone will apply for Professional designations or jobs. So I make sure I record in the first person, confidently, what decisions I took, how I took responsibility when I carried out my work ON THAT DAY!

You might be thinking "but you are not going to submit daily diaries for the past 5 years"- Correct, I am not, but this will help me to remember in better detail what my thought process was at the time or over particular periods. The goal is to move my career forward one day at a time, so I try not to get overwhelmed by the larger report and focus on tracking my daily activities.

Write both facts and feelings

I write both facts and feelings, whether together or separately, I also try to have a record of what happened and how it made me feel. When I feel confident in what I have done, it will reflect in my writing. I could keep 2 separate logs, one for a work day summary and one for overall daily reflection (sort of a gratitude journal), but I'm sure eventually these will become one.

Days turn into months, and months turn into years very quickly in the built environment. Working long hours on expansive projects, it's so easy to feel like a small part of a huge operation and lose sight of how far we've come as individuals. Journaling has been a lifesaving tool in reminding myself of the impact I have in this industry, and the impact it has on me.

This hardhatCAREERTIP was written by : Nadine De Mink a Professional Engineering Technician who completed her National Diploma in 2012, and has been in full time employment in the civil engineering industry since 2013. She has worked in civil, structural and now transportation engineering consulting services. The opportunity to be an ARE, has allowed her to grow substantially, while exposing her to a variety of real- world engineering problems. Within the past 10 years she has  undertaken further study and has received a Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering, an NQF7 Certificate in Labour Intensive Construction strategies, as well as attended multiple short courses to remain abreast with industry trends, standards and practices.