Engineering Management Institute

UPCOMING WEBINAR

Developing a Plan B When Giving Engineering Presentations

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Developing a Plan B When Giving Engineering Presentations is a guest post by Shoots Veis, P.E.

The mutter of the crowd begins to subdue as the moderator asks people to settle into their seats for the next engineering presentation.  After a brief intro, the presenter steps to the front of the room.  After a smooth speech introduction, the speaker is just going to his first slide when the projector light goes out.  While the projector’s light is now dim, the look on the speaker’s face resembles that of a deer in the headlights.

We have all seen something like this happen.  If you are unlucky, it has happened to you.  What happens next depends on your speech preparation.  If you included a Plan B as part of your speech preparation, then you can move on from the mishap with little disruption.  Most likely, you will impress the audience with your grasp of the subject matter and your ability to carry on without the projector.

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5 Key Skills You Can Build to Manage Conflict in the Workplace

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5 Key Skills You Can Build to Manage Conflict in the Workplace
is a guest blog by Walter Bodell

Manage Conflict

Conflict is an inevitable part of life. People with the healthiest relationships, both personally and professionally, understand and recognize this fact. Rather than trying to simply avoid conflict, they learn to manage conflict and work through it. Developing good conflict resolution skills for the workplace is possibly one of the most important things you can do to create a healthy working environment both for yourself and for others. By learning to manage and resolve conflict in the workplace, you can make yourself an invaluable part of almost any team. Here are 5 critical elements to you can use to manage conflict in the workplace.

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3 Things You Need to Know to Engineer Resolution

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Engineer ResolutionOne thing that is certain to happen in your engineering career is conflict.  This isn’t because the engineering profession is more prone to conflict than accounting or that engineers tend to be a contentious lot.  It’s because, as in any profession, you’ll find people.  Wherever there are people you will find conflict.  Because of this, it’s important to develop a basic understanding of the three things you need to know to engineer resolution.

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What Engineers Should Look for When Choosing Career Mentors

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This is a guest post by Carol Evenson
Career Mentors

If you are one of almost 2 million engineers in the United States looking for a mentor, then you have made a smart career decision. Studies show receiving mentoring from the right career mentor can make a measurable difference. So, what should you look for in career mentors? Here’s some suggestions.

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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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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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