What do you need to know to work as a Graduate Mechanical Engineers

Over the past 2 years in particular I have seen many employers wanting Graduate Mechanical engineers to have skills in CAD, & they will ask them to demonstrate their skills for about 1 hour, just to make sure they can draft, with speed, and accuracy.

The tests are not hard but sufficient to see whether you can draft and it’s very obvious, at the same time.

Now if you are in this situation they will require 2D mainly, not 3D modeling, so it’s important you have practiced in 2D

Now two options to get this work

1. Online applications, this is really hard, because you could be up against someone with 1.5 – 2 years of experience which 1500 to 2000 hours of drafting experience.
2. So if you read my posts I keep saying over and over again, if they know you beforehand then they have the option to train you without going online, without reading RESUMES, and testing lots of candidates. Employers like simplicity because this work is easy to assess and ultimately a great starting point to the industry and these skills are transferrable.

Once you have the basics done, and you understand design principles using standard plates and sections, welding, etc, you are ready to take on other sectors should you want to.

So the most popular or industry standards are Autocad and Solid works and there are others, but Autocad has been around since i used it in 1995 plus Microstation, in those days lots of people used different CAD packages as the principals are the same for designing, but it is a matter getting someone who can put it into context.

A final word of advice, if you graduated a few years ago and this is your career focus, practice as much as possible.