Career and Employability

Career Essentials

  1. Effective CV and Cover Letter Writing
  2. Navigating Interviews

Please visit https://www.monash.edu/students/careers

Academic Career Paths

Engineering Your Academic Career

While a PhD proves your academic and technical rigor, a sustainable academic career demands pedagogical mastery, intellectual agility, strategic networking, trend spotting and the art of grant craftsmanship. Join our guest speakers as they reveal how they navigated the competitive job market and successfully transitioned from doctoral candidates to faculty members.

Our panel of experts will share their personal experiences of transitioning into academia, covering:

  • The job hunt: How to find (and land) the right roles
  • The interview: Tips to stand out in a crowded field
  • The brand: Defining a research vision that impresses the hiring committee
  • The reality: Honest accounts of the pivots and perseverance required to succeed

Enhancing Teaching, Student Engagement and Classroom Dynamics

(23 July, Thursday, 2-3.30pm, Online/Zoom)

As engineering teaching assistants or future academics, mastering instruction, engaging students and establishing strong classroom dynamics are essential skills.  Join us for an interactive seminar designed to equip you with the practical pedagogical and communication strategies needed to run effective recitations, increase student engagement, and boost classroom interaction.

The Non-Academic Career Landscape

Strategic Transitions for Engineering PhDs

Join our employability forum to hear Engineering PhD alumni share their career journeys. Learn to decode your research value and translate it into diverse professional opportunities across Management, Marketing and Sales, Tech, and Policy.

The panel will cover:

  • Targeted Strategies: How to uncover and secure high-impact job opportunities
  • Interview Mastery: Tips for communicating academic or research expertise to interviewers
  • The Skill Gap: Identifying and developing essential skill sets for industry and the corporate world
  • Personal Branding: How to convince recruiters that you are a problem-solver
  • Inside Stories: Honest accounts of challenges, pivots, and success in the workplace

Introduction to Lean Six Sigma

As an engineering PhD, you excel at solving complex, technical problems. However, when you transition from the laboratory to industry, the challenges change. Companies don't just value deep technical knowledge; they also look for the ability to eliminate waste, scale processes, and drive systematic efficiency. Lean Six Sigma is a methodology used by leading tech, manufacturing, and biomedical companies to optimize operations, minimize variance, and enhance productivity. Join us in this one-hour seminar to learn more about Lean Six Sigma (LSS), tailored specifically for engineering graduate researchers.

The Entrepreneurship Series

Scaling from Engineering PhD to Founder
This session explores the journey of COOloop, an emerging startup dedicated to decarbonizing chemical production, beginning with acetic acid. As a vital commodity, acetic acid is essential to industries ranging from food and pharmaceuticals to textiles, adhesives, paints, and plastics. The speaker, Dr. Rajan Lakshman, will share his personal transition from a Monash University PhD student to the co-founder and CTO of COOloop, offering firsthand insights into the realities of launching a deep-tech startup.

Translating Research into Practical Applications and Impact

In this seminar, Dr Dilpreet Buxi, CEO and co-founder of Philia Labs, will share his journey from a technical expert to a start-up founder, diving into the mindset shifts, strategic thinking and planning skills, and real-world challenges that come with moving from research to developing products and building a company. Whether you are thinking about your own venture or simply curious about the entrepreneurial path, this seminar will inspire you to think bigger and braver about the possibility of turning your research or ideas into products and impact.