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5 Laws for Engineer Career Success

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5 Laws for Engineer Career Success is a blog post by Tom Jager

Career Success

“Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.”

This quote comes from Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk and beautifully describes what each engineer wants to do and should do to achieve career success: create, innovate, and improve everything around them.

Becoming a successful “wizard,” or engineer, has never been easy because the profession requires complex skills and even more complex responsibilities. To enter such a career, one has to develop the courage and personality traits needed to endure all the challenges one will face in this profession.

Despite a popular opinion, knowledge alone is insufficient to succeed as an engineering professional. You have to have that desire to design the things that millions are only dreaming about. That’s what drives people working on such amazing projects such as an autonomous car and an upcoming flight to Mars.

What else distinguishes these brilliant engineers?

The ability to follow the unwritten laws of the profession that keep them focused and moving forward.

In this article I’d like to focus on these laws in hopes that they can help you to become a successful or more successful engineer.

Law #1: Do Good Work

[Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

TECC 147: The Best Thing I Ever Did to Advance my Career

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Advance my Career

In this episode, I am going to share with you the best thing I ever did to advance my career in hopes that it will drive massive growth in your engineering career.  Usually when you look back on your career, you can see a few moves that made a huge impact on your success — I want to help you identify those and duplicate them.

Engineering Quotes:

Advance my Career

Advance my CareerHere are the key points:

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If Goal Setting Isn’t Working, Try Going With A Theme

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It’s pretty standard fare here on TECC to espouse the benefits of setting goals.  The reason we come back to goal setting over and over is because it works.  Goals:

  1.  Define a future intended situation.
  2.  Focus resource application.
  3.  Highlight what is important.
  4.  Can help bring what we want most in life into reality.

Goals can be great, but for some people they can be useless.  Not everyone operates according to goals and it’s only been in the past few months that I’ve come to realize this.  It’s not that goals don’t accomplish the items listed, they simply don’t inspire.

And for some people, goals can actually keep them from achieving what they want.

The reason is that the goal – especially if it’s of the big, audacious type – can become intimidating.  In these situations, instead of putting one’s head down and pushing through, the shields go up in a defensive measure to keep the intimidating work away.  Procrastination, stress, and a lot of other negative coping mechanisms kick in.

Not the best way to move forward in one’s career or achieve the level of personal success sought.

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TECC 119: An Engineer Overcomes her Fear of Public Speaking in One Year

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FearIn this episode, I talk about Lu Ding, PE, PTOE, an Engineer who overcame her fear of public speaking in one year.  I specifically discuss her ECSx talk at the Engineering Career Summit in New Orleans this past May. You will also here Lu’s talk in this episode and you can watch it at the bottom of this post.

Engineering Success quotes:

Fear

FearHere are the key points from the episode:

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8 Traits of Exceptional Engineer Leaders

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leadership

We all know bad leadership when we see it.  Most likely when you read that last sentence, the image of that bad leader popped into your mind.  What might be a bit harder to delineate, is the distinction between good leadership and effective leadership.  I think this is an important one for engineer’s interested in achieving their highest potential in this arena of the business.

Good leadership is by far better than bad leadership. [Read more…]

The 7 Key Result Areas for Engineering Career Success

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Engineering Career

You have the skills and ability right now to be ten times more successful in your engineering career. To make this change requires a strategy to focus your efforts and a commitment to incremental improvement.   The strategy will be built on seven domains that you have complete control over.   

Complete control to either improve or do nothing.  

All you have to do is apply the right attitude, employ the right mindset, then get to work.

11-30-15 tweet quote1 [Read more…]

3 Reasons to Design Gratitude Into Your Engineering Career

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Do you operate with a zero-sum mindset in your engineering career?  Do you believe that there is only so much pie to go around and if someone else gets it, you won’t get yours? Or, do you operate with a both/and mindset? That is, do you believe that there is adequate opportunity to support both you and everyone else? As it turns out, the type of mindset you operate in, will determine the level of performance you will bring to your work and the opportunities you’ll create for yourself. [Read more…]

Note to Engineers: Consider the Project Management Professional Certification

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The Project Management Professional Certification

Project Management Professional Certification

There are several tangible and intangible benefits I’ve realized since earning the Project Management Professional Certification (PMP).

As I contemplated what I needed to do to position myself to leave a twenty-year Air Force career back in 2010, I looked at my professional credentials and experience.  I was already a registered engineer, having earned my license early on in my career.  Since that time I’d earned a master’s degree, held numerous positions of increasing responsibility, and attended several professional military courses.  Despite the education and experience I’d gained, I wasn’t convinced that I had a compelling way of tying it all together for the pending job search.  Sure, I could put it all in a good package and give a 3-minute pitch about my skills.  But I lacked a recognizable standard against which any prospective employer – be they private or public sector – could tell I knew my business.  The answer:  consider the Project Management Professional certification.

Why The Project Management Professional Certification? [Read more…]