Career and Employability

Career Essentials

Online Modules (offered by Career Connect)

  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 rigour, a sustainable academic career demands intellectual agility, pedagogical mastery, strategic networking, and strong research communication skills. Join our panel of engineering PhD alumni as they reveal how they navigated the competitive job market and successfully transitioned from doctoral candidates to faculty members.

Our panel will share their personal experiences, 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

As engineering teaching assistants or future academics, mastering instruction, engaging students, and establishing strong classroom dynamics are essential skills.  Join our panel of engineering PhD alumni for an interactive session designed to equip you with pedagogical and communication strategies needed to run effective workshops or practicals, boosting student engagement and 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:

  • Job search strategies: How to uncover and secure job opportunities
  • Interview experiences: Tips for communicating 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 and successes in the workplace

Introduction to Lean Six Sigma

As an engineering PhD, you excel at solving complex and technical problems. However, when you transition from the laboratory to industry, the challenges change. Companies don't just value deep technical knowledge but also the ability to eliminate or reduce waste, scale processes, and drive systematic efficiency. Lean Six Sigma is a methodology used in tech, manufacturing, and biomedical industries to optimize processes and enhance productivity. Join us to learn more about Lean Six Sigma (LSS), tailored specifically for engineering graduate researchers.

The Entrepreneurship Series

Scaling from Engineering PhD to Founder

This talk will cover the journey of COOloop, a recent startup looking to decarbonise the production of useful chemicals, starting with acetic acid. Acetic acid is a chemical commodity used in a wide range of applications, including the food and pharmaceutical industries as well as textiles, adhesives, paints and plastics. This talk will cover Dr Rajan Lakshman’s personal experiences on this journey, from his time as a PhD student at Monash to now, a co-founder and CTO of COOloop.

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.