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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 I Passed the P.E. Exam

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How I Passed the P.E. Exam is a guest post by Thomas A. Anderson, P.E.
P.E. Exam

First off, let me say that if you are considering or already enrolled to take the P.E. exam, good for you. It will help your career tremendously. Your potential for advancement will increase and you will find avenues for career growth you never considered before. 

For more on why you should take the P.E. Exam visit my article here: My Top 5 Reasons to Get Your P.E. 

To pass the P.E. Exam, I went to PPI for their 18-week preparation course. The course is offered online and live, but also allows you to view the recordings later. I watched each recording repeatedly. 

Plan, plan, and plan some more. Nothing will help you more on the P.E. exam then having a solid plan. Lay it out on paper and follow through. This will ensure your preparations are complete. This is another reason why the PPI course is so valuable. They do the planning for you with their weekly lectures and homework assignments. 

P.E. Exam

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The Ugly Truth behind the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam (FE Exam) and How You Can Finally Crush It in Less Time than You Think

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FE ExamThis is a guest post by Joel Erway, EIT, author of 30-Minute EIT: How to beat the FE exam without beating your head.

Here at Engineering Management Institute, we highly recommend our friend and sponsor, PPI, for your FE exam review. As an exclusive benefit to our supporters, PPI has extended a 20% discount on their exam review materials. All you need to do is enter promo code PASS8 at checkout at ppi2pass.com .

Over the past three years, I’ve spoken with many engineers who are looking to advance their careers by becoming a licensed Professional Engineer (PE). Some are students fresh out of college and others are engineers who have been out of school for more than 10 years. But they both face a common problem.

They are stuck.

Preparing for the FE Exam and
Don't Know Where to Start?

Download this free guide on how to
streamline your FE Exam preparation.

The Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam is a beast. Six hours long, 110 questions, and up to 18 separate subjects to study for, depending on your discipline. It scares most people just thinking about studying for it, and some quit before they even start.

 “I Have Other Obligations”

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PE Exam Prep Guide: How You Can Pass the PE Exam without Having to Study “Everything”

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PE Exam

The following PE exam post is a guest post by TEM member Andy Lin, PE, SE. I was so blown away by its depth and detail that I have also added it to our Guides section on the website.

Here at Engineering Management Institute, we highly recommend our friend and sponsor, PPI, for your PE exam review. As an exclusive benefit to our supporters, PPI has extended a 20% discount on their exam review materials. All you need to do is enter promo code PASS8 at checkout at ppi2pass.com.

Here it goes:

It’s that “exciting” moment in your engineering career again.

After obtaining your Engineer in Training (EIT) and working for a few years, you are ready to take on the next challenge—the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam (PE exam).

As you start studying for the PE exam, you’ll probably notice that there are dozens of prep courses out there—most of which teach you “everything you need to know” about the exam.

Preparing for the PE Exam?

Here is a summary of this PE Exam Prep Guide.

Download the FREE guide for resources that can help you in your preparation for the PE Exam.

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Five Strategies for Creating SPACE and Separating Yourself from the Field as an Engineer

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6-10-14 TECC Blog Post Final PhotoIt has only been in the last few years that I have become more interested in soccer or, as I guess it is better known around the world, Fùtbol. The sport, which features the very simple objective of putting a ball into a net, is actually much more complex than it seems on the surface, and it offers many powerful analogies to an engineering career.

I’ve gotten to know this game because I have spent the last few years coaching my daughter, and while she is only in second grade, she is in a very intense travel league and her head coach is a professional soccer trainer. He tells me time and time again that the best soccer players do one thing really excellently—they find room on the field. They take the ball and then separate themselves from the other players. He calls it looking for the SPACE. Once they are out in space, away from the others, they can do so many things—shoot, score, make a brilliant pass, visualize their next move, and more.

The whole concept led me to start thinking about how engineers can get SPACE in their careers and separate themselves from the field. Here is a short list and description of some of the items I came up with: [Read more…] about Five Strategies for Creating SPACE and Separating Yourself from the Field as an Engineer

Engineering Career Advice – 5 Tips for Acing Your Annual Performance Review

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engineering career

Over the past week, I received at least 10 e-mails or phone calls from The Engineering Mastermind (TEM) members asking if I could help them prepare for their annual engineering career performance reviews. Most of the e-mails or phone calls started like this: “Anthony, I have my annual performance review tomorrow, and I was hoping I could speak to you about it.” These calls and requests inspired me to write this post to emphasize the importance that this yearly event holds for your engineering career and give some pointers for not messing it up.

Your annual performance review is a great opportunity to reflect upon your engineering career progress and maybe your one opportunity each year to present this progress to your employer. Here are five things you can do to get the most out of your annual performance review and not mess it up like many engineers do:

Prepare Ahead of Time – Most engineers, as I indicated above, wait until a day or two before to start preparing or even thinking about their annual performance reviews. If you had a big engineering project deadline on Friday, would you wait until Thursday night to work on it? No, of course not. Make your review just as important as all of your work deadlines—otherwise, you are putting your development LAST, and that is never a good thing. Start preparing one to three months before the actual review date.

Spend Time Reflecting and Writing – A few months before your review, reflect on the previous year. Make notes of all of your accomplishments as well as things you would like to improve upon. Where possible, quantify your accomplishments. For example, “Brought in $50,000 worth of engineering business to the firm.” Use these notes to either prepare a formal document that you can submit to your supervisor or to answer a pre-review questionnaire, if your supervisor gives one to you. This document should be submitted two months before your review to give your supervisor time to review, digest, and utilize the information in evaluating your performance, raise, and potential promotion. [Read more…] about Engineering Career Advice – 5 Tips for Acing Your Annual Performance Review

How to Create an Extraordinary Engineering Career – Anthony Fasano’s Complete Engineering Career Guide

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engineering career

JULY 2014 UPDATE: Since I wrote this post in October of 2013, the feedback from engineers has been amazing. This is a very long post that is meant to help you throughout your engineering career, so please bookmark this page. I have also created the following table of contents to make it easy for you to read about the topics you most need help on at this time. The original post begins immediately after the following table of contents:

The Engineer Career Guide
The One Thing You Must Do Before Developing Your Non-Technical Skills
Video 1: Setting Clearly Defined Goals
Video 2: Obtaining the Right Credentials in Your Engineering Career
Video 3: Finding a Mentor
Video 4: Become an Effective Communicator
Video 5: Networking/Building Relationships
Video 6: Being Organized and Productive
Video 7: Develop Your Leadership Abilities

Developing my non-technical skills while practicing engineering was one of the best things I have ever done in my engineering career and life. Since I started Powerful Purpose Associates in May of 2009:

  • My ability to set clear goals has helped me to understand that my mission was and is to inspire engineers.
  • Obtaining the right credentials in my engineering career as well as my coaching career has helped me to be able to rapidly advance my career and grow my business.
  • Finding a mentor was a key component for me being able to become a partner at the age of 27 in a reputable engineering firm.
  • Improving my communication skills has allowed me to write daily and weekly e-mails to engineers that inspire them to grow personally and professionally. They have also helped me write my book Engineer Your Own Success.
  • Improving my public speaking skills has afforded me the opportunity to present in front of over 5,000 engineers, many of whom have told me that my talk changed their lives.
  • Developing my networking skills has allowed me to build relationships that have brought me so many of the opportunities mentioned above and also so many rewarding friendships.
  • Increasing my productivity has allowed me to develop Engineering Management Institute (ECC) brand and The Engineering Mastermind community, now serving thousands of engineers every day — including two podcasts that have been downloaded over 1.5 million times.
  • Developing my leadership abilities has given me the confidence to start to coach engineers one on one and subsequently start my podcast, where I coach them on the air.

Most importantly, developing my non-technical skills has enabled me to build stronger relationships with my audience – much stronger than I could ever have done if I failed to focus on my own personal development, like many engineers do. The phrases that engineers use when they describe their experience with my coaching or one of my seminars include: [Read more…] about How to Create an Extraordinary Engineering Career – Anthony Fasano’s Complete Engineering Career Guide

The Only Stability You Have in Your Engineering Career Is You

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If you are reading this post, you’re most likely an engineer working for an engineering company. You get up each morning and go to work in what appears to be a ‘stable’ job. In reality, though, no matter how safe or stable your job appears to be, your employer can decide at any time to stop paying you and take away that perceived stability. However, your skill set, your professional network, and your reputation can allow you to react to a situation like this and quickly replace that paycheck.  Developing your engineering skills as well as your non-technical skills will give you the tools to truly maintain a stable engineering career. The following are some things you can do in your engineering career to ensure that it is genuinely stable.

Realize the Importance of Your Own Development

Stability in Engineering CareerDon’t get tricked by the illusion that your 9-to-5 job and paycheck create a stable career. Don’t build your entire financial future around that paycheck. Go through your career with a plan B that addresses the question, “What will I do if I lose my job tomorrow?” Having a good answer to this question and a good plan to go along with it is where true stability will come from.

Build a Very Strong Professional Network

A company can always take your paycheck away from you and end your employment with them, but they can’t take away your relationships. If you build strong relationships in the industry, it is very likely that should you lose your ‘stable job,’ you will be able to quickly find another one. I can’t stress this point enough, as many engineers rank networking low on their list of things to do because they feel that they can lean on the relationships of their company. WRONG. If you take this approach and lose your job or decide to relocate, you will not be able to lean on the company’s contacts. Also, having a strong network gives you a direct avenue to potential new business for your employer, which is like gold, especially in today’s economy. [Read more…] about The Only Stability You Have in Your Engineering Career Is You

Credentials Can Act as Keys to Opening Doors of Opportunities in Your Engineering Career

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Credentials in Your Engineering Career Development

While I never try to belittle the importance of being yourself and bringing your intangibles to the table every day in your engineering career-development efforts,there are certain accomplishments or accolades that are a must in order for you to succeed in achieving your goals in your engineering career—and credentials are among them. By credentials, I mean licenses, certifications, awards, education, publications, etc.

We have discussed this topic a lot recently in the Institute for Engineering Career Development forums, and I thought it warranted a full post here. There are unique skills and talents that you must develop to be considered among the best at what you do, such as your ability to connect with people, present information, be responsive, and stay productive; however, oftentimes in addition to all of the above, there are certain credentials which your goals will not be possible without. For example, let’s say you want to achieve partner in an engineering company, and the company requires a master’s-level degree and/or a professional engineering license; well, no matter how great you are at business development, you will have to gain one of those credentials to achieve your goal. While all of your skills and business accomplishments can walk you through that door to partner, having those credentials is the key that must first unlock the door before you can walk (or run) through it. No matter how fast you are going in your career, without that key, you will run into a locked door, every time. [Read more…] about Credentials Can Act as Keys to Opening Doors of Opportunities in Your Engineering Career

The Importance of Computer Technology in Your Engineering Career

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This is a guest blog by Nancy Evans

Computer Technology

One might think that computers and engineering are distinct technological pursuits, as people often equate engineering with large macroscopic projects while computers are seen as producing effects that are contained on microscopic chips. However, since the 90s we have increasingly seen a merger of the two fields, which is not only resulting in a rise in software engineering jobs but in the widespread adoption of computer-aided technologies into traditional engineering fields. As a result, engineers are seeing a significant expansion of options in how they can pursue work. Here are a few different ways young engineers can integrate computer technology into their careers: [Read more…] about The Importance of Computer Technology in Your Engineering Career