11 Professional Registration top tips

Around 1,400 IET Members are currently in the process of applying. To help you work smarter not harder, we’ve put together 11 tips to help you with your journey towards Professional Registration.

These helpful pointers have been put together by our team of experts and Professionally Registered members and explain what you need to make the best application you can.

Your application should be an extended description of your engineering career history not a summary of your roles; it should read like a compelling story not a CV.

You must provide us with a copy of your engineering (or other relevant) qualification certificates as part of your application. For applicants who started their course from 2013 onwards, you must also provide us with a copy of your academic transcript (HEAR reports) to accompany your certificates.

For help and support with drafting your application, please contact us by emailing profreg@theiet.org or calling +44 (0)1438 767333 and we’ll put you in touch with a trained advisor.

Start by signing up to one of our weekly Professional Registration webinars!

Further Learning can be demonstrated in a variety of ways including:

• additional formal study or Vendor training
• independent study around your area of engineering
• On-the-job learning, manufacturers’ courses, etc,
• leading/involvement in engineering research projects
• production and publishing of engineering papers and reports
• production and publishing of technical reports.

A Development Action Plan is your short, medium and long-term career development plan beyond becoming Professionally Registered. What are your goals and how will you achieve them?

There is no set format for this, but it must be included alongside your main application form.

An Accountability Diagram should show the organisational structure of your current employer or the project you are working on. Ideally, this should show two levels above and below your role. However for those working in a Matrix organisation where you may have significant technical accountability the accountability diagram could show technical leadership rather than the traditional chart. As a minimum, it should include:

• where your role sits within your current employer’s company structure or the structure of the project
• where the role of your supporter(s) sits in relation to you
• any direct reports you have in your current role.

If you’ve recently changed jobs, you may need to include an accountability diagram from your earlier position. It is also helpful to indicate any Professionally Registered engineers in your diagram(s).

This is the main part of the application form and is your chance to tell your engineering story! In the responsibilities section you should:

• refer to the UK-SPEC or ICTTech standard and how your experience matches the examples given.
• provide a description of what you were responsible for and what you actually did in each of your engineering roles.  You’ll need more detail for your more recent roles
• write in full sentences
• try not to use bullet points
• always use the first person
• think STAR – describe the Situation that needed your professional input, the Tasks you had to carry out, the Actions you took and the Results achieved.

The assessors are looking for evidence of your professional development, competency and personal technical contribution to engineering projects – this will not be found if you only give a description of what your company do or what the projects were that you worked on.

Use language like “I implemented, I designed, I oversaw, I managed” – they want to know what you did, what you were responsible for and what your engineering work achieved.

If you are working towards developing the required competences for CEng, collect and record evidence against specific competences using the self-assessment function in Career Manager. You can then transfer this evidence to your application once you are ready to apply.

You should also refer to the UK-SPEC or ICTTech standard throughout your application as this describes the competence and commitment requirements required for each registration category.

Career Manager is the IET’s online professional development tool and it has three main functions:

• Competence development – for engineers who are working towards Professional Registration. Here you can map your experience against the UK-SPEC and ICTTech competences, record evidence and identify gaps which require further development before being ready to apply.
• Applying for Professional Registration – we recommend that you use Career Manager to apply for Professional Registration once you are ready – especially since it has a reduced application fee!
• CPD (Continuous Professional Development) – all IET members can plan and record their CPD activities here.

Refrain from using acronyms or abbreviations unless you spell out exactly what they mean and include a brief acronym/abbreviation list.

Alternatively, you can apply offline by requesting our paper application forms from our website.