The official website Engineers Australia clearly says:
- Plagiarism: Career Episodes must be based on work conducted personally by you and must be written entirely in your own words. Presenting work conducted by others as your own and/or using other people’s words (templates, Career Episodes, online sources etc.) is considered plagiarism and is a violation of Engineers Australia’s code of ethics. This carries significant penalties including the rejection of the application, imposition of a 12-month ban and/or reporting of your details to the Department of Home Affairs for further investigation and action. Please Note: It is not sufficient to merely describe work in which you were involved. Career Episodes must be written in the first person singular clearly indicating your own personal role in the work described. Remember, it is what I did, not what we did or what ‘I was involved in’ and describe how you did it.
- Warning
Having your Career Episodes written by another person or persons constitutes unethical behavior and will result in serious consequences including but not limited to:
- Immediate rejection of the application along with the imposition of a 12-month ban
- Mandatory reporting of the applicant’s details to the Department of Home Affairs
Engineers Australia is aware of various entities offering CDR writing services. Please be advised that Engineers Australia does not, in any way, endorse or have any affiliation with these entities and does not condone applicants engaging these services. Applicants are required to complete their own applications and personally write their Career Episodes.
These instructions pretty much sums up the EA’s plagiarism policy for assessing the Competency Demonstration Reports (CDR) of engineers applying for a Skilled Migration Visa to their country. The sure-shot way to get your CDR rejected is to copy any part of your CDR, including the Career Episodes, from the online CDR samples and examples so readily available online.
This is a straitjacketed condition. Plagiarism in CDR is not only restricted to copying words and phrases from somewhere but can also pose problems if you pick up your career story ideas from the work done by other engineers (and not you!) or try to copy your template from somewhere else. Attempting such a trick will not only mean that your CDR will be rejected and you will face a 12-month ban but you will also be reported to the Department of Home Affairs.
Let us tell you what it means for you. When you get reported to the Department of Home Affairs in Australia, it means you will face allegations related to making false statements or claims to EA to obtain the visa. You may also be reported to the DHA Australia for producing and presenting fraudulent documents and producing and using false identities. It means that you will never get the visa you desire – even after the 12-month ban if over.
So, you have to be very careful when you write your CDR or seek help from someone to write your CDR as you do not want to get on the wrong side of the assessing authority.
Tips for you to write a CDR which is 100% plagiarism-free:
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Before you sit down to write your CDR, you need to know three things:
- Occupational Category under which you are going to apply,
- The Engineering Branch you choose, and
- The Competencies you need to highlight in your Career Episodes and your Summary Statement.
Download the latest Migration Skills Assessment booklet from the official website of the EA to find out more about it.
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Note that all the four Occupational Categories need different skills and educational qualifications. In short:
- An Engineering Associate should have completed 12 years of school along with 2 years of Advanced Diploma or Associate Degree in Engineering
- An Engineering Technologist should have completed 12 years of school along with 3-year Bachelor in Technology degree course
- A Professional Engineer should have completed 12 years of school along with 4-year Bachelor in Engineering degree course
- An Engineering Manager should have completed 12 years of school along with 4-year Bachelor (or higher) in Engineering degree course
Read through the details associated with these occupational categories as it can help you choose the narratives for your Career Episodes that highlight the related skills.
You can find the detailed competency requirements for each category and branch at ANZSCOSearch website, where ANSCO stands for 'Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations'. If you already know the ANZSCO code of your engineering branch or category, type it in the search box or you can simply type engineer and choose from the given options.
The official document for ANZSCO can be downloaded from here.
Read the MSA booklet thoroughly to see the instruction on how to write your CDR. The gist of it is that each of your Career Episodes should describe a distinct period or aspect of your engineering activities. It should not include too much technical material - just enough to bring out your role in the episode.
You don't have to worry about the template for the Career Episode as the MSA guidelines clearly state how you have to number your paragraphs and how you are going to use those numbers in your Summary statement to show where a particular competency is hired in your CEs.
- EA assessors are engineers too. They understand the career paths of engineers well and also, that no two engineers applying for the visa would have worked on the same project. Besides, you have to back up all the claims you make with the relevant documents and proofs. So, the best way to avoid plagiarism (related to language of your report or the intellectual content of it) is to state what is true. The authenticity will shine through in your CDR and you will have a better chance of being granted the visa.
Once you have written your CDR, you can pass it on to our professional CDR experts who can review it for you and run it through advanced plagiarism checking software to make sure that no instances of unintentional plagiarism creeps in your work. Since these experts have worked with hundreds of engineers applying for Australian visas, they understand the EA processes well and can point out any potential CDR fails that your document may contain and suggest ways on how to improve upon them.
Our CDR experts hail from different engineering streams and hence, have a good idea of what experiences you might have encountered as an engineer. They can help you choose the relevant category for you and know what questions to ask you to help you clear your mind and come up with Career Episode stories that show you in the best light to the CDR assessors. If you are in doubt, talk to them.