The Theory of Everything (in Engineering)

Any applications you do whether for university, a job, a volunteer position, or anything else will require you to convince others you are the right person for it. Note that this is not always the same as being the best at said position (in a vacuum): Perhaps in a white-collar job they wanted a unique perspective and one was unable to provide it (Engineering is a profession for which this might matter). One might also have poor communication skills, which would make them difficult to work with. Ideally, you want to demonstrate you have the attributes which are wanted, but what even is wanted?

What do they want?

This is not an easy question to answer. It will vary through time and place, so anyone who has not had recent experience here may not have a good grasp of what is needed in Canada's current era. I think it is best to imagine how the person reviewing your application would think, which is not always the same as how you or your parents would think. There are many things a reviewer might think about:

-How do the applicant's skills match up with what we want?
-Can the applicant fit in well in the environment they will be put into? Do they share our values?
-What does the applicant add to our organization?
-Does the applicant seem willing to learn?
-Is the applicant interested in what they will do in their role?
-Is the applicant interested in our organization specifically?

The amount each of the above questions will matter will vary depending on where you are applying. However, all will matter at least a little. However, before you start to ponder these questions, you must be aware of one major way to fumble your application.

The art of concision

Reviewers for any type of application are pressed for time. You might have been told that the average resume is looked at for just six seconds. This page is not meant to be a guide on resume writing, but if you are expecting to hand in your resume please find out how to highlight important parts that will increase your chance of being reviewed more thoroughly. It is also generally true that you can partly bypass this step through good connections who can vouch for you. As a result, I would strongly encourage finding connections in companies you are particularly interested in working at.

After the short resume screening stage (or if you do not have one), the reviewers still have a limited amount of time to actually read your resume and application. As a result, it is common advice to keep your resume to one or two pages. To accomplish this, you will need to write what you believe is most important. These do not necessarily need to relate directly to what you are applying for (fast food jobs require you to have decent communication skills, which apply to any job) but experience in the field is a strong asset.

However, there are things you can and should avoid. For example: redundancy. If you were very strong with math competitions and want to bring them up in a university application, if you made the honour roll a few times you probably do not need to put any distinction lower than that. If you made the Canadian Mathematical Olympiad (CMO) throughout your high school years, any normal honour roll placement may seem comparitavely unimpressive and thus not of value. Irrelevance is another example. Your math skills in high school may have been relevant in your university application, but if you are applying to an engineering job a few years later, that does not say anything about you that would be relevant to your application.

A master of the art of concision understands where and when something should be written down and how much it should be written about to prove their point to the reader. Concision is important in engineering especially and you will need to be concise in your APS111/112 assignments to do remotely well in those courses (which themselves will aid you if you ever write an engineering report in your career).

Connections

Nepotism is a powerful force. People you trust will be some of the first people you want to hire. This is not much of an issue for university applications but forging good connections and showing them who you are before applying can save you the stress of optimizing your resume and hoping the reviewer looked at the right spot.

Grades

Your grades matter a lot for university applications, probably more than they should. The best example I can show for this is the three or four people I know of (including a good friend of mine) who got rejected from UWaterloo Computer Science despite qualifying for the Canadian Computing Olympiad (CCO), which they host. Of the two I know somewhat well, both had poor grades compared to their peers. Their high school averages were in the low 90s. his does not mean that grades are the only thing that matter, but they must be kept in check (near the admission average at least).

Something similar applies for some job applications but grades matter much less, you may need a 3.0 GPA, though anything higher is rare. This is (for most) not as strenuous to get to as high school grades. This makes sense as in university, you have a greater opportunity to demonstrate your skills in other ways (university-level extracurricular activities are significantly more related to what you might apply for, and you have more opportunity to do passion projects).

Skills

Good grades show you have enough knowledge, but other skills will be necessary as well. These are both social and in the field. In the field, this generally boils down to "Will this person do a good job with what we assign them?" These skills are often listed when a job is posted. Before applying, have you demonstrated these skills? Any examples would be a good help here.

Fitting in

This is much more important for job applications. One will need to be able to get along well with the existing workforce. If one does not share the same interests and goals, it will be much more difficult for the group to complete tasks together and the amount of conflict may be greater than necessary. Determining what the organization wants here requires research into their mission. Do you support the orgnization's objectives?

Adding to the organization

Especially in engineering, it may be useful to have different perspectives. When working in a team, this increases the quantity of things people can draw on when thinking of and evaluating ideas. In APS100, the professors have used that as justification for admitting more women and ethnic minorities to the faculty. Whether or not you agree with this, organizations often value these unique perspectives and may be more likely to accept someone who seems to offer one.

Willingness to learn

This boils down to not having too big an ego. Any reasonable organization would expect someone new to not know or be right about everything. Being able to realize one is wrong or does not know would prevent arguments driven by one's insistence they are right. Without the willingness to learn, an organization would not be able to function as well due to their continued mistakes.

Interest in the organization and their role

I have a friend in his PEY who is having issues in his role becuase he finds it completely out of his range of interests. He was able to transfer to a new role, but not everyone is this lucky. Being in a role that does not suit him was a hassle for both him and the company and was clearly something the company would have liked to avoid. While you may be able to fake your interest in an application, your real interest will matter once you are on the job (and a good work experience is always better than a bad one). To ensure you seem interested, research the organization and the role. Know them well and talk about things they have done. Make it seem like you spent a lot of time looking at them.

What to take away from this

There are quite a lot of factors organizations will assess you on. Given they do not like spending too much time on each individual applicant, you must choose what to emphasize first. What do you think is most important? What would sell you the most to this organization? That is something that will vary by position. You may prefer to focus on connections to sell yourself further to organizations you are very passionate about or apply to hundreds of jobs hoping to get lucky. Both are valid responses to this problem and there likely is not a clear answer to which would work better.

There are plenty of good ways to apply for jobs, but which one works best for you and your situation is something you will need to figure out.

Last updated: 6/23/2025