Training & Personal Development at BAE Systems Australia

The grad program offers personal development but within the business unit there are many technical training courses both modules and seminars

The formal training is relatively poor. mostly just internal lectures. There are some graduate development modules but those are mostly irrelevant.

There are a lot of training and development programs available

A lot of technical training in the use of systems engineering tools such as DOORS Next Generation, Engineering Test Manager and CAMEO for model-based systems engineering.

The amount of training that I received to date is invaluable. there are face to face training plus online training that you can do at your own pace.

Company has yearly training that is mandatory. The company also has training catered towards exposing individuals to the other aspects of the company including roles and programs which enhances the knowledge of what is happening within the wider business. Skills developed include knowledge, emotional and cultural intelligence alongside greater depth of general experience.

At BAE we have various forms of training, with the main areas being graduate training and training in your function. For graduate training we complete a series of modules over our program that cover similar topics to what was completed at university e.g. personal brand, social intelligence etc. Then for my function we have regular training sessions, ranging from 30min to several days depending on your level in the business. Some of these training sessions are compulsory and others are optional. I find I learn a lot more with on the job training, where I am often given tasks I am not sure of how to complete and have someone teach me how to do it. Through this training my communication skills have improved through having to communicate with various bid team members, most often much more senior and older than me about topics I am not overly familiar with. I have also improved my time management and scheduling skills, through developing schedules and booking in meetings for bids. Furthermore, my research and analytical skills have enormously improved through working alongside experienced professionals in this area and assisting with their tasks.

Some training is useful while others are very surface-level and don't go enough in-depth to really understand a particular process or skill. I learn more from on the job training (3D printing, submitting purchase orders, writing business cases, supplier requests, risk assessments, standard operating procedures, etc) than I do from the training courses that I've had to attend so far. I find a lot of the training to be really boring and not engaging, especially when it's related to a software that the business uses, or anything related to systems engineering. It's a dry topic that is taught in an extremely dry manner and I wish more interesting or creative teaching methods were utilised when attending training sessions for drier topics. I wish there were more leadership and management courses for graduates so we can start developing those skills from an early career as opposed to needing to develop that later on in our careers.

Lots of frequent training

If formal training is needed, it will be provided. Being RnD, its not exactly something that has a linear/well defined progression of skills - its very much "learn on the job, absorb whatever you can from the others, and build your own experiences".

There is a wide range of training that I have already been involved in. Many different software package training that help me complete day to day tasks. Also plenty of graduate specific training to help improve business knowledge and personal career development.

The training I have done has been mostly useful. There have been some training courses that I have enrolled in, completed, and afterwards realised that the content is not relevant to the work I do. The courses in Systems Engineering have been very useful. However, the process to enroll and attend training is very hard to use and confusing, and seems to be changing every couple of months. This makes the thought of trying to organise and enroll in training very unappealing.

We have a number of formal training courses for project management. My only complaint with these training courses is they are online which does not make them as interactive. We have had a few graduate development training programs which show the company's priority to develop graduates at their early careers. These have been fairly effective.

Lots of training on different aspects, from engineering processes to things like fire awareness, fraud etc.

Training of new employees could be improved

Formal training has been beneficial. I would like to see more effort and structure for informal training. Limited interaction and informal learning with other peer graduates.

Most training is just reading/watching training modules on such topics like integrity or culture. Skills I picked up would be the training such as working from heights and 4WD training.

Some of our mandatory training is horrendously poor, both in quality and technical problems. The majority of the mandatory training is also in areas that are not relevant to us. The graduate training is fine, but it is very common-sense stuff like problem solving and communication.

Some of it is good (the technical training like systems engineering are good), some of it is bad (the more general graduate training is quite boring, e.g. 1 hour + talking about courage is not helpful.

General computer skills have proven to be invaluable - and understanding scheduling and time management.