emotional intelligence

How to Develop Relationships With Engineering Managers

November 18, 2019 By EMI

This is a guest post by Nader Mowlaee

As an engineer, you know it’s essential to be a team player, collaborate with your colleagues, and build your skills to advance your career. However, if you want to accelerate “climbing the ladder” or get access to pitch your ideas to the right people, then it’s worth building strong, positive relationships with engineering managers. Workers who maintain a strong, positive relationship with their managers not only increase their employment opportunities, but enhance engagement and improve productivity too. In fact, a Gallup survey highlights that companies with engaged employees increase productivity by 17%.

Without having a strong, positive relationship with your engineering manager, your boss may overlook you when someone is needed to take on a special assignment or travel to represent the company at a trade-show. Moreover, you risk hampering your job growth opportunities and becoming disengaged and unmotivated to work. So, it’s essential to develop positive and strong relationships with your engineering managers. Here’s how to do it:

How to Overcome Conflict with Your Fellow Engineers at Work

September 23, 2019 By EMI

This is a guest post by Nader Mowlaee

At some point in your engineering career, conflict in the workplace arises. In fact, conflict resolution takes up as much as 40 percent of managers’ time in the workplace. That’s because it’s natural for different people to have different views on how to accomplish a task or project. But when you’re working on an important project with your engineering team and have quickly approaching deadlines, constant conflict can slow down your team’s productivity. So, it’s crucial for engineers to overcome conflict with their colleagues. Here are three practical tips engineers can use daily to avoid or eliminate workplace conflict.

Why Technical Skills Alone Won’t Get You That Engineering Job

May 24, 2019 By EMI

Why Technical Skills Alone Won’t Get You That Engineering Job is a guest blog by Andrei Kurtuy

Technical skills are the tools of the trade for engineers. But don’t think for a second that the key to landing a great engineering job comes down to how your technical skills stack up against the competition.

Whether you’re a future or recent engineering graduate, or you’re well along in your career, looking for a new job is a situation you’re likely to face. Of course, you’ll want that job to be fulfilling and relevant to all that valuable training you’ve undertaken.

Well if you want to find your perfect job, you can’t let your technical background do all the talking. In today’s hyper-competitive work environment, recruiters are likely to receive hundreds of applications from people who (probably) have similar or better credentials than you.

So, what can you do to make your resume and cover letter grab an employer’s attention and land you a job interview? Redirect your attention. [Read more…] about Why Technical Skills Alone Won’t Get You That Engineering Job

Leadership 101- A New Paradigm?

September 21, 2015 By EMI

This is a guest blog post by Croft Edwards

Congratulations, you have been such a great engineer that management has decided to make you a leader and give you a team of engineers to lead. Shouldn’t be too difficult to do, after all people are just like engineering problems and in your 4 plus years of engineering school you had many leadership classes. Right! Oh, that’s not the case. You have not had many leadership classes; in fact, in your entire college career of engineering you did not have a single leadership class. What do you do? A great place to start is with a little clarity over what exactly is this thing called leadership and how is it different from management.

We define management as the authority granted to an individual by an organization. The organization you work for gives you authority to do things like hire/fire, manage people and budgets and make decisions in your role as a manager. [Read more…] about Leadership 101- A New Paradigm?