What is CDR (Competency Demonstration Report)?

Answer:

A Competency Demonstration Report is a reflection of your skillset in your engineering domain. It is a report that can help you carve a promising career path in Australia. In addition to being a pre-requisite to getting a skilled migration visa to the country, it helps the assessors understand the true professional that you are and what all that you have in your past academic and professional journey to continuously ‘learn’ and ‘unlearn’ in your domain.

A sure shot way to achieve success with your CDR is to read through the CDR writing instructions shared by the assessing authority Engineers Australia. You may do that by going through the Migration Skills Assessment booklet thoroughly. This must be the first step as you begin the process.

Remember that being an engineer is a skilled task and you are an expert in your field. So is writing a CDR. It is a professional report of different sorts. It requires professional report writing skills, in addition to having a good hold on Australian English. You must also abide by the established CDR writing guidelines, and of course, you must be an engineer.

Follow the below commandments as shared by some of the CDR writing experts, to achieve success in the first go.

1. Identify the top three projects from your academic/internship/professional journey, wherein you were able to successfully depict some/many of the desired competencies and how? Give an elaborate insight into the experts on your role, project objectives, and how you played a significant role in achieving the latter.
2. Keep the three Career Episodes, exclusive of each other, with no overlapping of the projects, This will help the experts see the variety and your ability to expand your horizons when required
3. Every Career Episode must be 1000-2500 worded, written in correct Australian English with an active voice, professionally presented, not heavy on technical words/jargons, and irrelevant information. The experts are not keen to know the history of your organization, while you may just focus on your role and help explain the same through an organogram.
4. Ensure that every one of the Career Episodes is in line with the ANZSCO code and occupational role that you are applying for. This helps your case by elaborating on the desired competencies only.
5. Use this opportunity to perfectly mix and match technical competencies and skills with managerial or interpersonal abilities ( through the episodes)
6. Help the assessors understand your approach to accomplish project goals by sharing about the technologies you used, network topologies, programming languages, specific design software, etc.
7. Mention about your professional accomplishments, achievements, certifications, or awards if any
8. Ensure that the CDR you submit is all about you and your technical prowess, with proofs that strengthen your claims. It must be 100% accurate with evidence to back the claims and not copy pasted.

These could be some of the points that if kept in mind will certainly prove helpful to achieve success with your CDR. You need to understand that your CDR is all about ‘your story’ that the assessors need to know and it can’t be a replication of anyone else’s journey.