How can I advance my career faster? How can I develop more influence and raise my importance within my company? How can I increase my salary?
These are questions that I hear my engineering colleagues say all the time.
Unfortunately, when it comes to career wisdom, there is an issue in America. Unless you read a lot of career and personal development books or literally invest in a career coach, you may never discover the things you can do around the workplace to accelerate your career.
The premise behind this post comes from Cal Newport’s “So Good They Can’t Ignore You,” where he says, “If your goal is to love what you do [and have a good career], you must first build up ‘career capital’ by mastering rare and valuable skills, and then cash in this capital for the traits that define great work.”
And not only is this self-serving — but your company will thrive because of this approach. Your colleagues will recognize you and you will feel more connected to them. Your boss may even tell you how great a job you are doing — maybe, right? And if you can garner these skills, you can command higher pay along your career journey.
This is exactly what a few of my young colleagues have accomplished lately, and our first story starts with a young man named Cory Hessel.
Cory, is like many smart young college students who aren’t sure what they want to do for a career. He majored in something that could potentially get him into medical school (biology). However, that was pretty much it — he had no Plan B. Ultimately, Cory did not go to medical school and somehow, he ended up in a survey career working for an engineering firm.
That being said, if you spoke with Cory for five minutes, you would be convinced he’s living in Silicon Valley and conducting a Series C $100M venture capital raise for his third technology startup.
Needless to say, Cory hasn’t felt 100% challenged or fulfilled by his survey career so far. Nothing against surveying, but sometimes people capable of rocket science should be doing something rocket science-like.
Rather than complain about it or feel trapped or allow himself to be stuck, Cory started candle-lighting his own project at home that can, in turn, help the company.
Six months and over 500 side hustle hours later, Cory has built Pennoni’s Photo360TM — a platform that allows you to digitize a project site from 3D laser scan or photography data, and share it with design staff, clients, and the public through the safety and convenience of a web application.
Photo360TM has been used for projects bringing in several hundred thousand dollars in fees since its development in 2020. In 2021, we are now in discussion with a few nationwide brands to provide them support via Photo360TM.
What does this mean for Cory? Well, everyone around here knows he developed the technology, and his name is brought up constantly. And it’s not just Cory and his whiz-kid-ness that people talk about. People know that Cory built this thing for the right reasons. It was Cory who just started coding the project at night — just because he wanted to, and he didn’t have massive expectations. It was Cory who went to our legal department to trademark it. And it’s Cory, among others, who can help develop business with a tool he literally built himself. How can you be more,“So Good They Can’t Ignore You” than that?
So what do your colleagues complain about? Where do they waste time and collect frustrations? Can you build a tool to help them? Pay attention to people’s pain and if you can solve it — do it.
But what if you don’t think you can build something like Cory did? Or don’t want to candlelight a career project?
That’s fine.
Julia Wolanski is easily able to do this within her 40 hours a week and has a super-healthy work-life balance. When she’s not training for a muay thai tournament, playing on her soccer team, or hanging out with her D1 crew team alumni, Julia is making waves within our company.
She has what I call, “The Career Triangle,” and is one of the best young examples of it that I see today.
Julia’s expertise lies within the GIS arena, where she operates as our GIS Project Manager. She works with a team of professionals to implement spatially based projects in the engineering field. Her work focuses on data collection, analysis, and reporting for a variety of clients using primarily Esri software.
I’ve met plenty of sharp GIS professionals. Like engineers, they are mostly technical individuals who are not known for their communication skills. However, I was recently sitting in a design visualization meeting and about halfway through the meeting, Julia pulls out her iPad. She brought up a quick demonstration of an Esri web application and ran the meeting for a while. Her ability to command the room, communicate complex technical information, and sell the attendees on our abilities was second to none. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you or your ideas are, if you cannot communicate them effectively, no one cares.
The third element of the triangle is Julia’s ambition. Enlist her support for a proposal focusing on a new type of opportunity — and she’ll have it done in a day. She hunts down her own work — like her vision to help vineyards with vegetation indexing and other types of mapping applications for niche agricultural clients. And finally, Julia knows where the team needs to be positioned for the future in general, and typically plants her flag during crossroads moments and states where she believes the team should be headed.
If you want to accelerate your career, be like Julia. Crush it on the technical front, work on your communication skills to be memorable and effective in the boardroom, and position your firm for the future.
You may be thinking that all of this is easier said than done, but what if you don’t want to develop something in your personal time, are afraid of speaking up in meetings, and aren’t 100% sure about your future in a leadership role? There are other paths to standing out.
My final example is a young geologist named Milanka. Her days often include field work at construction sites, where she is almost always the only woman on site. The things she hears construction workers say is ridiculous. They offer to carry things for her because they don’t think she should get dirty. They ask, “What did a pretty girl like you do to get up in construction?” All these gender stereotypes are a part of the uphill battle in developing girls’ interest in STEM fields at a young age.
So what does Milanka do? Well, she gets back in the truck and makes funny videos about her experiences.
And one field video is good enough to get 1.8 million views and has 94,000 TikTok followers. People within the company are talking about her. The entire project has inspired an influencer initiative within the company to find more people interested in putting out educational or entertaining industry content.
This type of career amplification is perfect for many because they spend a lot of time on these social platforms already, aspire to grow an audience, and know that if you can, brands will pay you for exposure. We have goals to leverage Milanka’s TikTok audience to help win projects, and she should be rewarded appropriately.
So the question is, which of these stories can you use, or what combination of ideas can you get started to change your career and help your company?
Can you build a proprietary tool like Cory Hessel?
Can you combine your technical skills, communication ability, and ambition to make yourself irreplaceable like Julia?
Can you build a following and command authority within your industry like Milanka?
Regardless of what you choose, go get started right now!!! Because if you don’t, someone else will, and truly you have nothing in your way besides yourself 😊
What questions do you have about these stories? Please leave a comment below or reach out to me a [email protected]. Thank you!
About the Author Jake Voorhees
Jake is the Marketing Manager at Pennoni Associates, Civil Engineer, YouTuber, HeForSWE Ambassador, TEDx Producer, and Speaker Coach.
He appeared on ABC’s “Shark Tank” on October 27, 2019, as a Managing Director for the technology startup NERDiT NOW. During his engineering career, Jake has built and managed microsimulation models for three $1B+ engineering infrastructure projects. He runs a YouTube channel for “Empowering Young Engineers,” which today has 80,000 subscribers, 150 episodes, and 30+ industry professional features. Jake is a HeForSWE (Society of Women Engineers) Ambassador, and Co-Chair of the Speaker Committee for the Millennial Summit — the largest conference for Millennials in the USA.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s post by guest author Jake Voorhees. If you’re interested in your firm possibly joining the Civil Engineering Collective, please contact us here or call us at 800-920-4007.
I hope you’ll join us.
Anthony Fasano, P.E.
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success