It is disappointing and stressful to receive a negative Engineers Australia Competency Demonstration Report (CDR). The documentation of Careers Episodes, Summary Statement and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) can take weeks or months to prepare for many engineers, and only to find that it has not satisfied the assessment criteria. A failed CDR should not be the end of an engineering migration journey, though. It is often used as a chance to review the application, find flaws, and resubmit a more powerful and compelling application. Thousands of engineers have been able to get a positive assessment after revising and resubmitting their CDRs.

The reasons for CDRs being rejected. Why CDRs are rejected.

Poor personal engineering competency is one of the most frequent causes of rejection of CDRs. Engineers Australia evaluates applicants for employment on their individual contributions to a project, not on its overall success. It’s also very common for people to talk about their company’s successes, their team’s work or the results of projects without clearly stating their own contribution. Plagiarism is another big issue. Engineers Australia employs advanced plagiarism detection software to detect content that has been copied or paraphrased extensively or from a template. You might have a legitimate experience, but provide it in a different format (language or sample documents), and it will be viewed as a bad experience.

Another difficulty is a poor alignment with the nominated occupation. For instance, if a candidate is applying for an Electrical Engineer position, he/she must make sure that the Career Episodes are predominantly Electrical Engineer-related activities. The assessor may be able to determine that the applicant does not have the required competencies for the chosen occupation if the episodes are too time-consuming, with a lot of management tasks or other disciplines.

Reviewing Assessment Feedback

A rejected CDR can be rebuilt, but the first step is to thoroughly review the Engineers Australia assessment result and any comments they may have made. Comments frequently tend to identify gaps in competency evidence, either clarity or quality, or lack of evidence. Applicants should use the competency elements listed in the Migration Skills Assessment guidelines to compare their Career Episodes. Questions to ask include:

• Were explanations of my personally designed, analysed and/or implemented work clear?
• Have I shown engineering calculations, engineering decisions or problem-solving?
• Do my Career Episodes use a narrative voice (first person)?
• Have I covered communication, teamwork, safety, and the responsibility of the professional?
  

These gaps can be identified, and this will be useful in planning an effective revision strategy.

How to turn setbacks into success.

Migration in engineering is seldom a simple process. A number of the engineers currently working successfully in Australia have suffered from failure to pass an assessment and only gained approval with time. Carefully review feedback, rewrite Career Episodes with more personal evidence, enhance the Summary Statement and make sure the document is original to improve their odds of success. Having the correct amount of persistence, attention to detail, and honestly portraying engineering experience will make the difference between rejection and acceptance.

Final Thoughts

If a CDR is rejected, it does not say anything about the potential of the engineer or his / her professional value. It means that the report submitted failed to demonstrate the necessary competencies. By carefully editing and communicating technical contributions, engineers can turn a bad assessment into a learning experience and get closer to their professional career goal of becoming an engineer in Australia.