Career Day
Civil Engineering 2023

My name is Egemen Yilmaz, I am 23 years old, live in the north of Essen and study civil engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen. I found a job as a working student at the NRW Construction Industry Career Day on 7 October 2021 and report on my experiences here: At the beginning of the fourth semester, I realised I needed some practical experience. Since I’m a full-time student and don’t have the option of skipping a semester, I came up with the idea of starting as a working student at a construction company. I wanted a job where I could work one or two days a week. Since my dream is to become a construction manager after graduation, I wanted to find a job in this field. My top priority was not to earn money, but to gain experience and not lose sight of my goal. After all, studying civil engineering can be very exhausting and feel like there’s no end to it. So I started looking for construction companies that were close to me. But that wasn’t as easy as I thought. It’s easy to lose track and the companies’ websites don’t always make it clear whether they offer jobs for working students. So I had to write to all the companies and hope that they would hire working students and that there were vacancies.

I adapted my applications to the respective company, which was very time-consuming. I applied to about 15 companies. Nevertheless, I didn’t find a job as a working student for over six months and often received no feedback at all. Through a flyer at our university, I became aware of the AkWW’s NRW Construction Industry Career Day. The possibility of having so many construction companies in one place and really having a personal contact convinced me immediately. Since it seemed like the last chance for me to find a job, I was even willing to postpone my holiday. Getting there was easy because there was plenty of free parking. Two other fellow students who were also interested in a job accompanied me, so the three of us drove to Wuppertal. Before we got to the hall where the companies are, there was a meeting for all the guests and visitors. After the welcome, eight companies introduced themselves on stage and we could ask them questions. That was interesting. Then we went into the hall, where a wide variety of construction companies, some of which I already knew, had a stand. I found it particularly exciting that the companies came from the most diverse regions of Germany and had cross-sectoral focuses.

It was just nice to be able to talk to someone from the company in person and to meet people from the construction industry after two years of lockdown. The conversations were always very informative, friendly and at eye level. At this career day, I got to know the company Wayss & Freytag. I met the senior construction manager, who was immediately very interested in working with me. I gave him my application documents and after about two weeks I already had my first working day as a student trainee in construction management. During my first time as a working student, a lot of things were new territory for me. There were many terms that I heard for the first time. But after a short time I was able to familiarise myself well and solve certain tasks independently. In the morning, before work started, when everyone was there, there was always a kind of briefing. We discussed what tasks had to be done, what problems we had to face and general information that was interesting for everyone.

After the briefing, I sat down with one of the site managers and we looked at what tasks I could do. Often I was allowed to go to the construction site when the site managers were making their routine rounds to see if everything was in order. My advice to other students is to find out during your studies what direction you want to go in later. There are often opportunities that you didn’t know about before. It doesn’t always have to be a student job. Just talking to different companies makes it clear how big the construction world is and what is possible. The Construction Industry Career Day NRW helped me to get a very good job as a working student, where I can gain important and practical experience. It’s worth attending AKWW’s Construction Industry Career Day just for the people who share similar interests! Everything there revolves around a later job in the construction sector.