Engineering a brighter future

A NEED for a continual pipeline of talent and fresh ideas has led to an increase in engineering graduate recruitment this year.

More than 170 graduates will start work at AECOM across Australia and New Zealand this year – equal to about 5 per cent of its total workforce – from about 5000 applications it received.

Thirty-seven graduates were recruited from Queensland, five from South Australia, 60 from NSW and ACT, and 25 from Victoria.

Graduate recruitment manager Annika Wilson says senior leaders needed more fresh ideas coming through the ranks so decided to increase the company’s investment in graduates. “They are pivotal to the business,” she says.

“They are really the pipeline of future leaders of our business as well.

“It makes good business sense to continue getting these new and fresh graduates through and we’ve seen in previous years that probably the investment hasn’t happened and there have been gaps in different levels.”

Environmental scientists, landscape architects and surveyors as well as civil engineers have been recruited, and about half of all new recruits are female. Permanent roles are offered at the end of the three-year graduate program, with many previous participants now in team leader and management roles.

Having something extra to offer an employer was what led to Michael Flynn and Keshini Preeyadarshanan’s (pictured) success in landing a job. Flynn was employed through its 2016 graduate intake and had applied to 35 companies which he had researched before applications opened.

“Reading that AECOM is the number one engineering consultancy company in almost every demographic helped cement that they were a company I could grow my professional career with while contributing to their success,” he says.