by Olivia Augustin | Jul 13, 2023 | Guest Interview
Clients ask Olivia to translate their documents all the time — a tender spec, a contract, a manual. She always says no. Not because she won’t help, but because teaching English and translating are two different jobs, with two different kinds of training. So she...
by Olivia Augustin | May 23, 2023 | Guest Interview
Thinking about moving to Australia as an engineer? The timing might be better than you think. Australia is short on engineers right now, especially in regional areas, and employers are actively looking. But getting the job is about more than your technical skills....
by Olivia Augustin | May 6, 2023 | Solo Session
You can hold a technical conversation, defend your work in a meeting, and handle the hard parts of your job in a second language. And then a blank email opens, the cursor blinks, and a two-minute task turns into twenty. If that’s the thing that quietly eats your...
by Olivia Augustin | Apr 14, 2023 | Guest Interview
Highly educated, highly capable professionals still freeze up mid-sentence in a foreign language. That’s the starting point for this episode with Candice Lee — realtor, relocation specialist, and my friend of almost 20 years — who’s spent over a decade...
by Olivia Augustin | Feb 20, 2023 | Cross Over
Engineers are trained to communicate in steps. Step 1, step 2, step 3. Read the diagram, follow the procedure, done. But the moment a project manager asks you to cut a 4-hour safety orientation down to 20 minutes, or a client asks you to sign off on something outside...
by Olivia Augustin | Jan 9, 2023 | Technical English
Everything can sound new and confusing when you’re learning a new language, especially when it comes to a language like English, which very often does not follow its own rules. Luckily, for us engineers, there are systems. Four of them, and they are called the...
by Olivia Augustin | Jan 9, 2023 | Engineering & Career
Speaking with people from other cultures can be difficult, but working in engineering as a woman can be even more overwhelming. Women are still a minority in STEM, and we can find it difficult to communicate our needs and find a job that respects and elevates us. My...
by Olivia Augustin | Jul 8, 2022 | Guest Interview
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Andrea Zimmerl, a fellow Viennese and a fellow engineer, who made one of the boldest career changes an engineer can make: she went from plastics engineering to communication coaching, life coaching, and...
by Olivia Augustin | Jun 2, 2022 | Guest Interview
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Becky Paroz, a 30-year veteran of the Australian construction industry, engineer, project manager, and quality assurance specialist, to talk about why industry jargon might be costing your international team...
by Olivia Augustin | Apr 22, 2022 | Solo Session
In this episode of English for Engineers, I share why I started this podcast in the first place, then walk through five practical, no-fuss ways to master technical English as a working engineer. What You’ll Learn in This Episode Why does listening to English...
by Olivia Augustin | Apr 8, 2022 | Guest Interview
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Catherine Stagg-Macey, executive coach, team coach, and founder of Conversations at the Edge, to talk about the one skill that keeps international engineering teams from falling apart: empathy. Catherine has...
by Olivia Augustin | Apr 8, 2022 | Engineering & Career
That is not a trick question. And for engineers on international projects, it might be the most important one you ask all year. Today we are talking about leadership in technical environments, because maths, science, and logic will not save you from the one thing...
