Filling in Your Application Form

Filling in Your Application Form

This post is about some aspects on filling in your IEM Application Form i.e. your application to become a Corporate Member of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia.  The title may give the impression that it is a trivial and mundane task and due to this impression, many applicants get rejected.  Let’s focus on what may possibly go wrong in the Application Form process.

Nicking a Corporate Member’s Report

In the new form that is implemented since September 2007, the applicant is required to submit their Training and Experience Report.  This report shall not be discussed in detail here but the problem with the report is that many candidates are so very eager to obtain their Professional Status that some resorted to obtaining a copy of their Senior Engineers’ or newly elected Corporate Members’ Training and Experience Report and copy them.  Perhaps in future, serious disciplinary actions could be imposed upon these sorts of unethical actions.  This sort of unhealthy practice usually occurs when the candidate(s) came from a medium to large organisation and access to a copy from his or her seniors is easy.  Please don’t risk it.  English may not be your first language but no matter what, you should not copy and nick sentences off from your senior’s report.  My advice is that if you really need to copy, do change the words and make your own sentences.  The best would be to write something original.  It is weird how one cannot describe one’s own experience in words where this experience is supposed to be personal and experienced by oneself and not from a senior’s report.

Experience Shortcut

Some design engineers may have lots of design office experience but perhaps no site experience.  If you do not have site experience, do ask your superior to put you at the construction site.  Some applicants, even though without any site experience would try their luck by claiming that they have 12 months of site experience.  Similarly, some site experienced engineers would try to claim that they have 12 months of design experience.  This is how your application gets rejected.  Firstly, if you write something not logical and does not substantiate the 12 months (which is the minimum you require), then you could easily get rejected.  There will be a gauge on whether you actually have the 12 months.  If you could justify yourself well, then you should be ok. 

Let’s say you were with a company for one year i.e. 12 months.  You have to justify that you actually carried out 12 months of design work.  For example in Column A, you filled in 1 Jan 2014 to 1 Jan 2015.  It would be quite difficult to justify that you have exactly 12 months of design work experience.  It would be difficult to justify unless your company is giving you job continuously and you have a design task for the whole one year and you did not take any leave whatsoever.  Be honest.  Maybe from 1 Jan 2014 to 1 Jan 2015, you only actually touched design work for 11 months.  But there are also techniques to obtain 12 months in full.  It really depends on your writing.

Making IEM’s Life Difficult

You could make IEM’s life easier by giving out more detail.  Some rejected applicants and some who are about to submit their application forms had approached me and this is the advice I give them: - “Just be very detailed in order to clear all ambiguities”.  Can you imagine a candidate writing the following: -

In Column A, 1 Jan 2014 to 1 Jan 2019

In Column B, 1) Proposed Addition and Alteration to Bungalow on Lot……

                        2) Proposed Demolition and Construction of Existing Building and ….

                        3) Proposed Construction of New 5 Storey Hostel……..

The candidate merely includes the title of the projects.  This will make the life of IEM difficult because IEM cannot guess what you experienced by just stating those titles.  They are not mind readers.  Even if you mentioned that you were involved in the projects, IEM cannot gauge your involvement as they are not psychic.  It would be better if you said that you were involved in the RC design, foundation design, etc.  Even if your Training and Experience Report may have detailed information, your application form should be brief but as detailed as possible too.

The other issue to look out for is the duration of the project.  One could have mentioned that he had been working from beginning of 2014 to end of 2018.  But however, he only listed three projects as illustrated above.  IEM would also be interested to know how many months one spent on a particular project.  Again, IEM cannot be guessing.  So, for each of the projects you mentioned, do include how many months you used for a particular project.