Just five years ago, when Western Australia's mining boom was beating strongly, engineering graduates could just about walk into any job they wanted.

Talk of students being offered up to five jobs, even before they graduated, was not uncommon.

Now the tables have turned.

"It's not as easy for graduates as it was a few years ago when four, five, six, even eight companies were all vying for one graduate."

That's Megan Motto from Consult Australia, the body which represents engineering companies around the country.

Ms Motto says the slowdown in the mining industry is affecting the number of graduates companies need.

Many companies have scaled back or axed their graduate intake programs this year.

Industry figures show almost half of the sector is cutting back on recruitment while a quarter is handing out redundancies.

Many senior engineers have lost their jobs or been cut back to fewer hours to deal with the dwindling supply of work.

It's a problem Queensland University of Technology lecturer, Doug Hargreaves has been experiencing first hand with his students.

"There is a slowing down or a flattening I guess for the numbers of students who are able to get jobs, certainly in vacation experience at this stage," he said.

"I predict very much so that by the end of this year there will be quite a lot of students who have graduated in engineering degrees who will have difficulty getting jobs."

But back in Western Australia and university lecturer Tony Lucey says the downturn is yet to be reflected in his numbers.

"Over the last four years, we've approximately doubled the number of mechanical and civil graduates," he said.

"At the same time the percentage employment rate for civil engineers is typically [that] 90 per cent find work after three months.

"For mechanical engineering it's 80 per cent after three months.

"Our data obviously lags because we don't have the employment data for this year but students are having to put in more applications in order to obtain graduate positions."

Step change

The mining game has always experienced ups and downs because of the cyclical nature of the market.

But it is safe to say the most recent mining boom has been the biggest and most profitable yet.

It sparked a period of growth many economists believe the nation will never see again.

Megan Motto says while the engineering sector is accustomed to the cycles, the most recent one has delivered profound impacts.

"The sustained economic growth of the country of 22 years, and of course the mining boom simultaneously over that period, has marked some of that cycle and it's become an expectation now for graduates in the engineering market that they will always have plentiful work," she said.

Tony Lucey moved from the United Kingdom more than a decade ago to take up a teaching post at Curtin University's school of engineering in Perth.

He says the slowdown is simply normalising the engineering jobs market to better reflect the same trends experienced in other countries around the world.

"In Western Australia, the demand for engineers from the resources sector has dominated the employment of graduate engineers and that's an unusual situation," Professor Lucey said.

"It's not the same for engineers around the world."

He says the situation experienced in WA - where students have walked into jobs, with little or no experience, at the rates they have over the past five years - is unparalleled.

"I come from the UK, [and] it was always my expectation when I taught in the UK that students would have to spend a six month period writing a lot of applications to gain employment."

Short lived?

Despite the current 'doom and gloom' overshadowing the market, Doug Hargreaves is confident the sector will rebound swiftly.

"I do believe this will be short lived; the economy has been flat over the past year or so, coming down from a boom if you like, [and] as a result there has been no investment in new projects, [either] large ones [or] small ones," he said.

He says new infrastructure projects promised by the incoming Abbott government will drive demand for engineers in the future.

"With more people, we need more infrastructure, we need more transport systems, we need more telecommunications, we need water, we need power, we need all of those things and engineers are involved in delivering all of those services," Professor Hargreaves said.

It's a challenge Megan Motto is urging governments' to deliver on; to establish new drivers to create a steady pipeline of work for the nation's growing skilled workforce.

"Governments need to get serious about [creating] independent decision making authorities to supply a very secure pipeline of infrastructure work," she said.

"We would also like to see some national co-ordination in terms of infrastructure markets and we'll see that centred around the development of cities in particular."

Professor Lucey believes the slowdown in the resources industry frees students up to work on other engineering endeavours.

"There is a clear need for engineers in any developed, modern society," he said.

"In the future it may not be so lop-sided and so dependent on the resources.

"[So engineering graduates], rather than seeing themselves automatically destined for the resources industry in Western Australia, may actually see themselves as innovators, creators, developers, founders of small to medium sized enterprises.

"That will be the new form of intellectual engineering needed to take Western Australia's economy to the next step."

But for now, Professor Hargreaves says graduates will be taking several steps to wait out the downturn.

"I think there are three options for students who are going to struggle getting work towards the end of this year.

"Some of them is post graduate studies, some will find employment somewhere, and it might not be in the engineering field, and I think some of them will travel."