Engineering Management Institute

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Understanding and Optimizing the Long Game That Is Your Engineering Career

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This is a guest post by Jacob Valentien, PE 

Understanding and Optimizing the Long Game That Is Your Engineering Career

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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How Important is your First Engineering Job – Engineering Career TV Ep. 25

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Q: How Important is your First Engineering Job?

Welcome to Episode #25 of Engineering Career TV. The topic for this episode is how important is your first engineering job.

I spend most of the Engineering Career TV episodes answering questions that have been submitted from engineers around the world on how to rapidly advance their careers and live the lives they want to live.

You can submit questions for the show by clicking here.

Let’s jump into today’s topic: how important is your first engineering job, which is based on a question from Joe, who asks the following:
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To Move Ahead In Your Engineering Career You’ll Need To Travel

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150817 - InTheSands

A lot of members of the Engineering Career Community love to travel, both for work and for play.  They understand that to grow in their careers and as individuals, they have to get out into the world and mix it up.  Experience life, experience developing relationships, and yes – experience being uncomfortable.  This last point might not sound enviable, but true travel introduces a level of uncertainty.  And uncertainty has a way of making most people – me included – uncomfortable.

But exiting your comfort zone is a necessity for growth, growth as a person and as a professional.  Simply put, to move ahead in your engineering career you’ll need to travel. [Read more…] about To Move Ahead In Your Engineering Career You’ll Need To Travel