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Why Communication for Engineers Is so Important

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Why Communication for Engineers Is so Important is a
guest blog by Thomas A. Anderson, P.E:

Communication for Engineers

Do you remember the telephone game?

In school, you and your classmates tried to pick a phrase and “pass it on” by whispering it to the person next to you. Then the phrase was passed from person to person until the last person announced the phrase. How much did the phrase change during the game? As people relay message from one person to the other, the message will often be distorted.

While the game is a lot of fun. It also teaches us important lessons.

  • If you do not receive information from a reliable source, you may not get the correct information. It turns into gossip.
  • If you do not produce information properly, it will not be received as planned

Communication skills are vital to success in your personal life and your engineering career. Poorly delivered messages can turn into misunderstanding, frustration, or even a disaster.

By practicing communication, you will understand more of what people say. Your family, friends, and co-workers will have the confidence to come to you when they find themselves in need.

What are the keys to clear communication?

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Three Salary Negotiation Tips for a Better Engineering Job Offer

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This is a blog post by Nader Mowlaee

Salary NegotiationRegardless of your job title, or what kind of engineer you are, at some point in your career, you will likely engage in a salary negotiation. Asking for more money or a better job is a daunting prospect. What if your employer says no? What if you lose your job?

Calm down and don’t panic — salary negotiations happen all the time.

Before you ask for a pay increase or talk about your salary expectations in a new job interview, follow these 3 steps. I promise they will significantly boost your chances of success.

1. Timing is Everything

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Engineering Summer Job – 4 Ways to Finding the Perfect Job

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Engineering Summer Job – 4 Ways to Finding the Perfect Job is a guest post by Jake Lester

Engineering Summer JobDeciding to get a job during the summer break is a significant step towards establishing your future as an engineer. There are a number of things to consider such as location and the pay that you wish to receive for the services rendered. Of course, since this is an engineering summer job, also known as internship, and you are still a student, you should not expect your pay to rival those that are already on the employee roster. Before embarking on a job search, you need to analyze yourself and the qualities that you’ll offer your potential employer. You will need to prepare a resume, regardless of whether you’re still in school or not. In doing so, you should consider any achievements you might have that may be attractive for an employer, and include them on your resume. Volunteer work or personal projects that you have embarked upon should be feature here.  However these are just a few of the basics items to consider.

Besides the basics, here are 4 actions students can take to secure an engineering summer job:

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Avoid Torturing Your Audience When Giving Presentations

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Avoid Torturing Your Audience When Giving Presentations is a guest post by Shoots Veis, P.E.
Torturing Your Audience

We all know it. We all hate it. Yet, all of us do it at least once in a lifetime. How often have we suffered through a presentation where the slides, usually crammed full of information, were simply read to the audience? It’s not really a presentation so much as a live reading of a document meant to torture audience — or at least it seems that way. The presenter has stuffed as much information as they can onto a slide – a bad practice to begin with – then they read those overcrowded slides to an audience. Those presentations don’t work for three reasons.

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7 Tips to Engineer Your Job Promotion

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7 Tips to Engineer Your Job Promotion is a blog post by guest author Sreeram Sreenivasan

Job PromotionDid you know that 23% of employees feel they’re overlooked for a promotion? There was a time when hard work and professional conduct were good enough to get engineers promoted. Today, they’ve become the norm. Keeping your head down and slogging hard won’t cut it any more. Engineers need to apply specific tactics to increase their chances of getting a job promotion.

1. Analyze your current situation

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You Are an Expert, and It’s Time to Own It

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You Are an Expert, and It’s Time to Own It is a blog post by guest author Patrick Sweet, P.Eng., MBA

Expert

In the world of knowledge work, expertise is everything. Gone are the days of the master builder who knew every trade and could do it all. Employers look for people with more and more experience in smaller and smaller niches. Experts are linchpins in their organizations in every industry.

Needless to say, being able to lay claim to any kind of specialty is very valuable in one’s career. It’s something every engineer should be pursuing in one form or another.

Luckily, developing expertise isn’t anywhere near as difficult as most people think. In fact, when you stop and think about it, it can be very easy to develop real expertise quickly and to reap the benefits in your career, even if you’re just getting started. The only trick is to re-frame the way you think of expertise.

Don’t ask permission

The first mistake people make with respect to expertise is that they think they need others to validate them as an expert. That’s nonsense. If you know more about a given subject than 80% of people, you’re an expert. You don’t need to be in the top 1%. You don’t need a PhD. All you need is to know your stuff better than most people.

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Managing Individual and Firm Licensure for Engineering Firms

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This is a guest post by Jerri-Lynn Wier of Harbor Compliance

Firm LicensureEach state has a unique regulatory landscape that individual engineers and engineering firms must navigate before offering services. At each milestone in the firm’s development, new requirements apply, further complicating the task of staying on course and maintaining good standing. Firms can reduce their paperwork, speed the application process, and reduce their risk of unlicensed practice by taking a proactive, comprehensive approach to firm licensure. Such an approach must pay equal attention to all three sides of the professional licensing triangle: entity management, firm licensing, and the licenses of individual engineers.Firm Licensure

Entity Management: Qualifying to Do Business in a New State

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PMP Certification – How to Obtain Your Certification in 2018

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PMP Certification – How to Obtain Your Certification in 2018 is a guest blog by Thomas Anderson

PMP Certification

Education Requirements for the PMP Certification (Project Management Professional Certification) include a four-year degree (bachelor’s or the global equivalent) and at least three years of project management experience, with 4,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education OR a high school diploma with 7,500 hours leading and directing projects. Experience may NOT go back more than 8 years. Experience must be non-overlapping.

You will need to send PMI(Project Management Institute) the details of this experience and/or education, so it’s best to gather and prepare this information before you open the application. Once you’ve determined you meet the eligibility criteria, it’s time to apply. Collect the following information and then use the PMI website to guide you through the process.  You’ll need specific information such as:

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How to Get Your Resume Noticed: Tips for College Students

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How to Get Your Resume Noticed: Tips for College Students is a guest post by Kevin Nelson

No doubt, writing a resume when you’re just out of college is a challenging task, especially if you think that most employers prefer candidates with experience. The fact is especially true for engineering job openings — everyone would rather hire an experienced pro for such a responsible and challenging position. At the same time, a lot of great companies are looking for young talent as it (let’s be frank) allows them to downsize on the payment. All of this, however, does not mean that you should underestimate the importance of a well-crafted resume — after all, every job opening sees an average of 250 resumes, and only 2% of those candidates land an actual interview. Let’s find out how you can wind up in those lucky two percent and get your resume noticed.

Start a career objective

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Actions Speak Louder than Words in Your Presentation

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Actions Speak Louder than Words in Your Presentation is a guest post by Shoots Veis, P.E.

Presentation
Most engineers, and most people, will tell you that giving a presentation is not something they look forward to.  However, given our love of efficiency, engineers should have a different outlook.  One reason we give a speech to an audience is because it should be the most efficient way to share information.  The presenter has information they need to disseminate to a lot of people, so why not get them all in a room and tell everyone at the same time?  Doing so might even generate questions that you can answer for the group that wouldn’t come up if there wasn’t a group of people in that room.

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