Talking about your professional experience

Think visual

Are there pieces of equipment that are integral to your job that you could take in with you?

If so, you could place them on the students’ desks before they enter the class or give them out to be passed around. You could even turn it into a team competition: “Guess the object”. This age group like intrigue and they love competition – and once you’ve got them thinking “What’s this?” and “What do you think it’s used for?”, you’re already generating scientific discussion and debate.

Dressing up

Do you have to wear any special kit to do your job?

Take some of it in to school with you and invite some students to try it on. You can then ask questions such as:

“How does it feel?” “What’s it made of?” “Why do you think we have to wear this?”

Straight away you’re involving the students in the real life application of science and engineering.

Both the above approaches are very simple techniques for engaging the more visual and kinaesthetic learners in your audience.

What’s interesting?

What interests you about your job may not necessarily grab a teenager’s attention. That doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting, it may just be a matter of presentation.

For example, although it will be important to give some idea of the qualifications you needed to achieve your present professional status, your audience may be just as interested in hearing about your time as an engineering student.

Similarly, although you will have interesting anecdotes about specific engineering projects you have worked on, teenagers may be equally interested in where and how you had to live in order to work on them.

Think of things from your audience’s point of view: check every point you plan to make and think ‘why am I making it? what do I want the audience to take from it?’. You may find that there is an alternative way of telling the story.

You are the story

Try and put some of ‘you’ into your presentation. Tell them how you feel about your job and why you like doing what you do. This age group are just starting to think about what they are going to do when they leave school. If people like you don’t tell them why being an engineer can be a wonderful career, they may never know.

This audience respond well to honesty and authenticity. The chances are that if you have worked with someone or on a project that you found genuinely amazing and inspiring, the students will be amazed and inspired too.

Mind your language

Avoid any professional jargon or acronyms. Exclusive language can be very alienating and, once this audience switch off, it can be very difficult to make them tune in again. It can be useful to practise your presentation in front of a non-engineer before you try it in a school. If there’s anything they have trouble understanding, you can be sure that the students will struggle too.