The career advice all students miss

Octopodi Technologies has had a busy July. But we never miss a community event that is meant to benefit students.

Preface: We always attend these events for the students. But weirdly enough, we always benefit.

At the Waterloo Engineering Competition (WEC) this year, there were so many great projects, presentations, prizes. However, what has impressed us the most is the energy of the student participants.

During the Networking session, we heard one resounding messaging: students are concerns about their careers. Although this has always been the sentiment, there is an extra urgency in the air this year. The students themselves are expressing concerns around the dramatic increase of “entry level expertise” the engineering sector seem to now be expecting.

Looking at the job market, this concern is very valid. Data does not lie. What we are seeing is that entry/new grad/junior roles are shifting to become intermediate+ roles.

Let’s be clear here, we do not have a magic bullet for this problem. But there are things that we can do to help current students.

So Octopodi Technologies is partnering up with Rubber Duck Innovations to put on a workshop during #WaterlooTechWeek directly aimed to help students get every last drop of understanding as they are working through their degrees.

Poster with QR code to register for the event.

I don’t think this is something obvious to students but the main goal your assignments is not to assign a grade. The main purpose of these assignments is to help everyone (professors and students) understand how well the students are understanding the course material.

If we take the “grade” portion out of the equation, what assignment is designed to do is to give an understanding of where one can improve. It’s an absolute treasure trove of data that most of us ignore.

So come join us at this event. We are going to dig deep into this topic. You will get a great understanding of how to read your assignment feedback, and how to get clear directions on how to implement changes to supercharge your expertise.