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TGEP 43: Engineering Geology Explained: Engineering with Passion

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In this episode, we talk to Felipe Ochoa, Ph.D., M.Sc., M.Eng., B.Sc., a geotechnical engineer who is passionate about geology and geosciences and his career as an assistant professor. We discuss his passion for geology and some of the great projects he has been involved in. He also talks about how having — and beating — cancer affected his personal and professional lives, and provides a very interesting perspective on how he views work-life balance.

Engineering Quotes:


Geology

Here Are Some of the Questions We Ask Felipe:

  • How has mentoring young students enriched your career?
  • How did cancer affect your engineering career, and what have you learned from it?
  • What does geology entail? Please talk about one or two projects you worked on that stood out to you, and how they benefited your engineering career.
  • What about the research that you do — what does that entail?
  • How do you manage work-life balance, and how important is it for engineers to maintain a healthy work-life balance?

Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed In This Episode:

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TECC 265: Finding Career Fulfillment in Your Engineering Career

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Career FulfillmentIn this episode, Jeff Perry, MBA talks about how you can find career fulfillment. He shares a framework that will help you on your journey and some actions that you can start taking right away to get on the path to engineering career fulfillment.

Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed About Finding Career Fulfillment:

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How to Approach Mentorship in Your Engineering Career

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This is a guest blog by Steve Soldati, P.E. 

MentorshipWhat do you want out of your career? What are your aspirations? What are your short- and long-term goals? Are you on the right track or are you veering off? These are the questions that many engineers have either thought about or even dug deeper to answer, and then are some who might not have even sat down to think about where they are going. They are just living day-by-day, clocking in, and keeping afloat.

For the record, there is no right answer nor one answer on how any particular person handles their career, job, or contribution to this industry. However, what happens all too often is an engineer can identify their goals, have an idea of where they want to go in their career, but just don’t know where to start or HOW to get there.

This is a scenario that I found myself in many years ago when I was a younger engineer trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my career. Especially in civil engineering, which is a broad industry that has a lot to offer for different career paths. The solution to this dilemma is mentorship. But it’s not quite as formal as you might think it is. You’ll read below about how you can approach a mentorship to tailor to your career and the resources available.

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Understanding and Optimizing the Long Game That Is Your Engineering Career

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As I reflect and think about the various blog topics that I could write about for the Civil Engineering Collective, I wanted to start off by summarizing one of the biggest concepts that I see young engineers struggle with in their first few years after graduating college and starting their career. The issue is that your engineering career is quite the long game, and it has only truly started. Engineering school is step one and obtaining your professional engineering license should be the step where everything accelerates (and not slows down).

Establishing a challenging and rewarding engineering career is very important to me, and I hope to break down some foundational concepts so that you can set off on your own challenging and rewarding engineering career. I think the following four major components are most critical to take into consideration for your career development:

  • Mindset
  • Experience
  • Continual learning
  • Goal setting

You can find tons of content on each of these topics from all kinds of sources, both internally focused on the engineering field and externally. I think there is value in immersing yourself in these topics early and often to continually remind yourself of the value of each.

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The Importance of Soft Skills in Your Engineering Career

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Soft skills are important to every engineer’s career — and in this article, I share some great examples to help them stick with you! Learn from my missteps!

Armed with a great education from an excellent institution, I thought I knew it all. I just started my first post-graduate, full-time position with a reputable engineering firm. I was ready to conquer the world … or so I thought. Through some much-needed trial and error, I have learned several valuable lessons over the first few years of my young career. At EMI, we understand the importance of soft skills, and are always trying to reinforce the lessons we teach.

Below are three personal anecdotes relating to soft skills that I think will help you to retain some valuable lessons:

1. Humility: Trust Your Leaders

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3 Steps to Building an Accountability System for Your Engineering Career

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This is a guest post by Nader Mowlaee

Accountability SystemCareer success and growth comes to us when we accept responsibility for our actions, our wins, and our failures. This is because what we put into our career, from education to continuous learning, training, and certifications, dictates what we get out of task accomplishments, project achievements, and daily performance. We begin to notice that no one else but ourselves controls the power of success by taking full ownership of our consistent everyday actions, positive thoughts, and constructive energy.

Taking full ownership for building an accountability system for your engineering career is a powerful thing because there is no way to go back and fix the mistakes you made or change your career choice. However, at one point, you will discover that to change your engineering career trajectory, you will have to make changes to your daily routine and build an accountability system to guarantee those changes will remain in place for as long as it takes for them to become habits.

Accountability System

Here Are Three Tips for Building an Accountability System for Your Engineering Career:

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The Power of Perseverance in Developing a Strong Engineering Career

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This is a guest post by Nader Mowlaee

perseveranceThe good news is that your beliefs can strengthen your engineering career success, and as you build stronger core beliefs, you will raise your motivation to learn and grow into a more capable engineer. But the bad news is that changing your life and reaching your career goals will not be an easy task. You will likely fail over and over again before you succeed, and the chances are that achieving new levels of success on the job will take longer than you had initially forecasted. 

However, through building new habits, developing your skills, and demonstrating tenacity and grit, you can create a strong engineering career beyond what you initially thought was possible. On the other side, a poor set of personal habits, a low level of aptitude, and a lack of perseverance can explain why most engineers fail to achieve their career goals.

We are going through a very tough job market right now, and since the pandemic began, there have been many engineers who lost their jobs or had to pivot into a new career path so they can survive, keep making an income, and in some cases, to thrive. But you can’t allow job market setbacks, short-term failures, and temporary job losses to take away your energy and take you away from getting what you deserve.

Perseverance

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2 Steps to Setting Goals for Changing Your Engineering Career in 2021

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This is a guest post by Nader Mowlaee

Changing Your Engineering CareerSTEP 1: Identify the Outcomes You Want to Create or Contribute To

Align your mission with a company’s mission that motivates you. It is tough to come up with innovative ideas by yourself, especially if you are starting to set new goals or changing your engineering career and you do not know where to start.

If this sounds like you, then you’re not alone. Many engineers have been making career transitions this year and certainly last year in 2020, and I have been there guiding them along the way. I know how it feels to come up short and feel like there is no future for you, and in this article, I want to give you a simple 2-step process to setting powerful goals that can contribute to you successfully changing your engineering career in 2021.

Let’s start by accepting that the world is our playground and we can get to play with our own rules, especially as an engineer. We are a special breed of people who can acquire new skills on demand and can pivot whenever it’s necessary so that we can create better outcomes in our careers and lives. However, you do not have to create your own job from scratch. Just join an existing team, follow their footsteps, and enable them to achieve their grand vision. Then you can branch out later to create your own unique results.

Changing Your Engineering Career

Here is an example: When I decided to leave an engineering career behind and get into technical recruiting, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. All I had was a role model and an attractive staffing company I had just joined. So all the goals I set were fully aligned with that company’s vision and core values.

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TGEP 14: Be Open to New Opportunities in Your Engineering Career

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In this episode, we talk to Sebastian Lobo-Guerrero, Ph.D., P.E., a geotechnical project manager and laboratory manager at American Geotechnical & Environmental Services, Inc., about how you can be open to new opportunities in your engineering career, what geotechnical engineers can do in life, and what it means to be an engineer who attends conferences.

Engineering Quotes:

New Opportunities

New Opportunities

Here Are Some of the Questions We Ask Sebastian:

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TECC 236: How to Level up in Your Engineering Career

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level upIn this episode, I talk to Shawn Livermore, a bestselling author, software engineer, consultant, and tech startup founder. He wrote a book called Average Joe that has lit the world on fire and has given hope to people, explaining that anyone in the tech world can create and that anyone on the peripheral of tech can break through to the center where innovation, creativity, and opportunity meet. And in this episode, we have the privilege to talk to him and hear him share some of his greatest stories, tips, and advice that will certainly help you to level up in your engineering career.

Engineering Quotes:

level up

level up

Here Are Some Ways on How You Can Level up in Your Career:

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