I'm in Australia and am just finishing up my first year of a surveying degree. I feel like there hasn't been enough prac time in the course so far and am thinking about some sort of combination of working and studying as I continue with my learning.
I'm wondering for people already in the industry - at what stage do students make useful workers? Should I maybe finish 2nd year first before looking for a job? I think ideally once I get a job I'd like to prioritise that and study part time. Is that generally acceptable for employers?
On another note, I've heard rumours that graduates with little or no work experience are seen as incompetent - is that true? Is it really essential then to get a job while you're studying?
Also, even if its not really the right time to look for a job I am hoping I could do some unpaid work experience in the holidays - is it unreasonable to contact local surveyors and request that they take me on for a short period for work experience?
Nothing beats practical experience . Go and get some . Surveying is one of those professions that no matter how much book learning you do , you have to learn while doing as an apprentice.
First and foremost, stay in school. If your financial situation requires that you work, well then, by all means, get a part time job but try your best to remain a full-time student. Many employers will hire students for summer work and may even help with your tuition.
Graduates without work experience aren't necessarily looked upon as incompetent but problems occur when graduates come to work expecting to be a crew chief from day 1 and think they know everything. Education is extremely valuable and teaches the theory but is only half of the equation. The experience you will gain by working is the other half.
Don't be afraid to ask questions and try to learn something from everyone you come into contact with.
Good luck and welcome to the profession. By the way, this place is full of knowledge. Some of the greatest minds in our profession participate in the discussions here.
No matter how much school, training or experience you may have, when first hired you will be considered incompetnt. Face it, you are the corporate FNG (freaking new guy). It will take you some time to "prove" yourself to the old hands and to the Boss.
You will have new knowledge that the current crew lacks. That is what you bring to the table. Know your equipment and software well. First time you show the old hands a "new trick" that you have learned, you will begin to win them over. Win them over and the Boss will quickly follow. Never expect any new job to be a bed of roses where your potential is instantly seen. That NEVER happens.
Now the idea of seeking work for the experience will be well received no matter where you are. We have taken on "summer interns" many times and it has benefitted the employee and the company in each case.
Drop out for experience and make school secondary?? NO!! Do not play the fool. I have seen many good guys do that and in EVERY case, they NEVER have completed their studies, so they have never reached their full potential. NEVER MAKE YOUR STUDIES SECONDARY!! That is the road to ruin.
Never quit learning!! I am 65 years old and I still am learning new things. New software tricks, new methods. To succeede you MUST stay on the cutting edge. Get dull and you stay in the same place. That's never a good situation.
Not sure how college works there, but here all the students try to get surveying jobs during the 3-4 months of summer break. The survey companies and departments of transportation all need extra help in the summer.
Yes, even unpaid hanging with a crew would help during your holidays.
Get all the practical experience you can, BUT STAY IN SCHOOL FULL TIME if you can afford it. I had to go to school on and off for years because of finances and when you start making (and spending) money it can be hard to get back to school.
Best of luck to you.
Scott
> I could do some unpaid work experience in the holidays
Don't work for free. Keep that for volunteering. You work, you get paid.
Stay in school and get it done but maximize your work experience as you go: summer employment between semesters and week-end if available.
There's a big shortage of surveyors in Australia. You are in the right place.
The surveying curriculum in the local college requires co-op credits in which a student works in the field in between various levels of courses. At graduation, they have field experience and are much more valuable to the work force and often have already found full time employment from their co-op employees. In the economic downturn, it has been difficult to place all of the students but the system is still excellent.
My college experience was strictly classroom (typical) and when I went to my first surveying job, I couldn't wait to show those old-timers this fancy new math and technology that I was so much better at than them. Obviously, they showed me how little I actually knew, ran circles around me in math and were the best mentors a newbie could hope for. The point being, you can learn a tremendous amount by doing if the opportunity arises.
If you have a local surveying organization, join it immediately and attend all the meetings you can, and you will meet people that can help you in your journey.
I don't know in what part of Australia you are located. But just for general advice, a long time surveyor named Richard Abbott who lives in and works out of Adelaide might be a good person for you to get to know. Or he might point you at someone closer to where you are located.
He can be contacted by email through this board. He posts under the pseudonym RADU.
I believe he is currently working elsewhere in Australia other than in his home area, so contact might take a while.
B-)
Change your major.
> Change your major
:bad:
Practical experience is great if you can find it, but def stay the course! Invest in your future so you can control your path.
to be honest about it, i did not know anything about actual survey during school. sure you knew the math, laws, etc but not the "how".
in school, you knew that all traverses should be looped & checked for errors in closures. but I realized how difficult it was to close the traverse when you are dead tired doing the forward run & you needed to do it all again to get back to the 1st point!
even with GPS today, you will realized that work will be easier but it is still a difficult & demanding job.
don't worry, just concentrate on your studies now. you will learn all the actual survey work when you get your 1st job.
advice, do everything to get your 1st job immediately. you will learn a lot from it.
> I'm in Australia and am just finishing up my first year of a surveying degree. I feel like there hasn't been enough prac time in the course so far and am thinking about some sort of combination of working and studying as I continue with my learning.
Good idea
> I'm wondering for people already in the industry - at what stage do students make useful workers?
There is no "stage". You're as good as anyone who starts surveying without any education.
> Should I maybe finish 2nd year first before looking for a job?
The test is whether you can manage a job while going to school and not what grade you're in.
> I think ideally once I get a job I'd like to prioritise that and study part time. Is that generally acceptable for employers?
I would recommend taking on a job while your going to school if your schedule can work with it and if you can handle a job. But I recommend getting through your studies all the way. It can be tough going to school part time and working full time, and it might take 10 yrs or more to finish school at that rate.
> On another note, I've heard rumours that graduates with little or no work experience are seen as incompetent - is that true?
Maybe by some hard-a$$ not so great employers, but I like taking on someone who is a student of surveying. They actually learn the mechanics of surveying and have a clue of what they are doing and why. Just don't come on with the attitude that you are better than everyone else....you'll have that handed back to you on a platter. Be respectful of the guys with experience, and learn from them.
>Is it really essential then to get a job while you're studying?
No. Of course someone with experience and a degree will probably be worth more, but I would advise to get the education behind you even if it means not working (if you can afford to go to school without working).
> Also, even if its not really the right time to look for a job I am hoping I could do some unpaid work experience in the holidays - is it unreasonable to contact local surveyors and request that they take me on for a short period for work experience?
I wouldn't offer not getting paid. But I would think that a lot of guys would possibly be happy to take you on as an "intern". Most surveyors I know love sharing their knowledge with someone who actually listens. You'd be surprised how many surveyors who work on crews don't want to learn or already think they know it all.
Work if you can. Go to school, regardless, and full-time if you can. Make contact with surveyors and go to their professional society meetings if you have some you can join. Be respectful; and I think you'll go far. If you find a good survey mentor, get a job with him if at all possible. Think for yourself. If you get on with a lowballing surveyor with bad habits, try to be able to think about what you learned, and look for a better employer.
:good:
It's never too early to start work experence. At this stage it's really a good idea to get put on as a Chainie (Survey Tech/Assistant) and build up a lot of general knowledge. Before long at all you will probably work as a Field Party leader and by the time you're in 4th year (assuming Full time at Uni) you will be doing a lot of the work you would be expected to be doing as a Grad Surveyor.
Who are you doing your degree through? If you are in SE QLD (USQ or QUT) I have some contacts you could call to get your foot in the door. Lecturers usually also know a lot of people in the real world and might be able to help you find somewhere.
Make study the priority, not the work. At QUT by second year we had 2.5~3 days a week 'spare' which most of us used to work part time at a Survey firm. A lot of employees are very flexable with students studying willing to allow additional time off (without pay of course) around exam time etc.
Thanks!
Thank you to everyone who has offered me advice. It’s given me some things to think about and it’s helpful to hear from some pros as its hard to guess what the industry is like when you’ve never worked in it. The main reason I’ve been thinking about my work/study options is because the semester is drawing to a close and I have to start thinking about and planning for next semester as well as what I’m going to do over the holidays.
This past week has been a good reminder for me of how variable the workload is for uni and how it can easily get out of hand – this week I had a lot more work to do than planned because group members in a group assignment didn’t get their allocations done. This sort of thing happens a fair bit I’ve noticed and with really variable class timetables I had thought it would be difficult to balance PT work and FT uni. It had seemed to me that it’s easier to work more hours and study less hours than the other way around, but I have taken on board the point of how it may be hard to keep the motivation needed to finish study over many years. So, I’ve decided to stick with full time study for now and to look for holiday work. I’ll have a chat to my teachers to see if they have any leads. I also thought the point about joining a surveying organisation was a good one so will look into that too.
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First, you need an understanding of the purpose of the degree. It is not to make you an expert upon graduation. It is not a shortcut to bypass 10 years of experience in 4 years. Experience and education are different and are both valuable.
The education behind the degree is something that gives you a much broader view of the profession than one would normally get during several years of experience. Employing organizations, public or private tend to stick to a few aspects of surveying that they are good at, or perhaps are just used to.
If you work for a local surveyor with just a few field crews, you will probably get a lot of experience on boundary surveys, topographic mapping of sites up to a few hundred acres, construction staking on small to midsized residential and commercial projects, and a smattering of other similarly sized projects related to small to midsized residential and commercial projects.
If you work for an organization that works on large infrastructure projects, whether public or private, you won't get much boundary experience, perform much detailed mapping on small sites, or experience the joys of dealing with the various contractors that are working over the top of each other on a too-tight construction site, some of whom might not have a clue how to read your stakes, and many of whom don't exercise much care around stakes you set for other contractors. But you will get more experience with geodetic control, large scale mapping, and in many cases, work to greater precisions than one would on residential and commercial boundary and sitework.
Your education will provide you with some of the "inside the black box" knowledge of how some of the tools that we use work and the reasons behind the proper procedures. That knowledge comes in useful.
But your education only gives you a little knowledge across the broad spectrum of survey practice, it does not give you the depth of knowledge of any particular aspect of practice. You get that depth from experience.
If anyone tries to give you the impression that upon graduation you should be treated like a survey superstar, they don't understand the role and the limitations of a 4 year degree. Some of those people might be prospective employers or coworkers looking to knock the college boy of an imaginary pedestal of either the /employer's/coworkers' making, or perhaps also of the graduate's making. That mistaken impression of the role of education might also come from your instructors. One of the West Coast (US) schools had built themselves a reputation of producing graduates with a vastly overinflated sense of worth and knowledge largely because their instructors were pumping them up about how knowledgeable they would be compared to their lesser peers upon graduation.
With the degree, an ability to put learned knowledge to practical use, and a good work ethic, you will find more and better opportunities for advancement than will most of your coworkers without formal education. But that depends more on the individual than the possession or lack of a degree. An intelligent employee who takes it upon himself to study, who learns well on the job and applies his knowledge in an efficient and effective way but who did not have the opportunity to earn a survey degree is a better employee than one who got the degree but retained little knowledge and can't effectively apply the degree to one's work. the self-starter/self-learner, whether degreed or not, is better as an employee.
My personal experience was that I began my 4 year degree right out of high school with no practical survey experience before. I had a difficult time seeing how anything I was being taught would be used in a practical environment. Because of financial issues, I did not go straight through, but had to drop out for a couple of years. I worked in surveying during that time and when I went back to school, all the subject matter made much more sense to me and it was far easier to see the practical applications. There is a definite advantage to gaining some experience either as you progress through your degree or by taking off a couple years and then returning.
The downside is that in leaving school for experience, you may find that getting back to school becomes increasingly difficult as life tends to shape itself differently. You have to make it an uncompromising goal to return before certain milestones happen in life. You need to identify what those milestones are for you. Could be a date, could be a set of circumstances.
Plan to get both. The sequence in which you do so matters less than having a plan and sticking to it.
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Thanks for your reply.
> If anyone tries to give you the impression that upon graduation you should be treated like a survey superstar, they don't understand the role and the limitations of a 4 year degree.
No one has really given me any impression of what to expect upon graduation - I've just heard rumours really. I've worked in unskilled jobs and am used to being treated like a doormat when I start any new job as a matter of course. To be honest that's kind of what I'm expecting - especially after my experience of first year at uni and realising that there's not actually much hands-on practical work involved. I find it odd that anyone would get the impression that I would think that just graduating from uni would put me on anything like an equal footing with people who have years of experience. I'd like to not be seen as incompetent, yes - but I have no illusions of superstardom. That is to say - I'd expect to have to work my way up just like in any other job. The point of attending uni for me is that when I decided I wanted to do surveying I found out that you have to do the degree to become registered so I figured there was no way around it and I'd just have to make the necessary sacrifices to get the course done.
> My personal experience was that I began my 4 year degree right out of high school with no practical survey experience before. I had a difficult time seeing how anything I was being taught would be used in a practical environment.
I have difficulty with this too... it makes me feel impatient about getting work experience... I'm still fighting that even though I've decided to stick with FT study for the time being.
> Plan to get both. The sequence in which you do so matters less than having a plan and sticking to it.
Yep, working on the plan - going to speak to a careers counsellor - it might be possible to get into a mentorship program with someone in the industry which I think might be helpful right now.