soft skills for engineers

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

July 9, 2013 By EMI

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

What to Do in Your Engineering Career When You Don’t Know What to Do

May 30, 2013 By EMI

This post was inspired by a recent conversation that I had with one of our Institute for Engineering Career Development (IECD) members. She is a young engineer and not sure what direction to go in her engineering career. She is considering various questions, such as:

What specific discipline in her engineering field should she go into?

What types of projects does she actually want to work on, on a daily basis?

What kind of master’s degree should she pursue?

What will make her happy in her engineering career?

These are all important questions to be considering in your engineering career development, and to be honest, it’s quite scary to have to deal with them all at such a young age. What happens if you answer one of them wrong? What if you go into a discipline and don’t like it? What if you get the wrong master’s degree?

My recommendation for anyone who is dealing with questions like these would be to try to build FLEXIBILITY into your engineering career development plan. Try to take steps that help you to develop but still leave you open to other possibilities. Here are a few ideas of how to implement flexibility into your career: [Read more…] about What to Do in Your Engineering Career When You Don’t Know What to Do

Your Ability to Facilitate New Business Development will Greatly Impact Your Engineering Career Development

April 18, 2013 By EMI

When I talk to CEOs of engineering companies, I always ask them what they are looking for when they hire engineers, especially in this economy where they hire fewer than they used to. They all answer this question the same way: they reply that they are looking for engineers who do more than just engineering. They are looking for engineers who can also manage projects, manage people, and ultimately bring in more business for the firm.

I noticed this in my engineering career first hand when I worked for an engineering design firm. Those engineers that could bring in new clients and new projects essentially put themselves on the fast-track to the next promotion, because they were directly impacting the company’s bottom line, and there is nothing that executives love more than a positive impact to the bottom line.

The challenge here is that there are very few engineering schools (if any) that have undergraduate or graduate engineering courses on business development. To be good at developing new business for your engineering company, you will need to have above-average people skills, including your ability to network and build strong relationships. The following are seven strategies that you can employ in your engineering career to help you find and develop project leads for your company:

Improve your people skills. People always say that you must have good people skills or interpersonal skills to be a great engineer, but the question is, how do you get them? My recommendation to you would be to read a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (affiliate link), or listen to it. I listen to this audiobook whenever I have a long car ride, and it has dramatically changed my ability to interact with people, especially people who are angry or upset. [Read more…] about Your Ability to Facilitate New Business Development will Greatly Impact Your Engineering Career Development

The Emotionally Brilliant Engineer

March 20, 2013 By EMI

This is a guest post by Pat Sweet.

Over at my Engineering and Leadership blog, I tend to talk quite a bit about how business skills can be applied to the daily work of an engineer so thatengineers can be more productive, more purpose-driven, and more satisfied in their roles.

Today, I wanted to share one of these concepts I’ve borrowed from the world of business and show you why it might be the single most important thing you need to develop this year.

Harvard Business Review’s Top 10

My wife gifted me an excellent little book recently. It’s a collection of Harvard Business Review’s all-time top ten articles on leadership. It features some of the greatest business minds of all time, like Peter Drucker and Jim Collins.

I was struck by an article written by Daniel Goleman called “What makes a leader?” Goleman argues that, once people makes it to the executive level of a company, what distinguishes a successful person from an unsuccessful one is their emotional intelligence, not their technical skill or cognitive ability. [Read more…] about The Emotionally Brilliant Engineer

Selecting an Engineering Company: Does Size Matter?

March 11, 2012 By EMI

Last week I attended the 11^th annual ASCE Younger Member CEO forum at Columbia University in New York City. The topic for the evening was: Selecting an Engineering Company: Does Size Matter? There was a panel consisting of high-level executives from some of the largest companies in the world as well as some smaller engineering companies. The panel included: Jack Buchsbaum, Assistant Chief engineer at the Port Authority of NY/NJ (PANYNJ), Neal Forshner. Sr. Vice President at AECOM, Neil Lucy, Senior Vice President at Parsons Brinckerhoff, Joseph Tortorella, Vice President at Robert Silman Associates, and Theodore von Rosenvinge, President at GeoDesign.

The president of the lower Hudson Valley ASCE Chase De Rose started out the night by stressing the importance of finding a mentor in your engineering career. In fact, the word mentor seemed to be a recurring theme throughout the evening in the panel members’ responses. Once the panel began, younger engineers had the opportunity to ask these executives questions about working in big or small engineering companies. Deciding between a big or small engineering company can be a critical decision in your engineering career development.

One engineer asked the executives to give their opinion on how much harder it may be to stand out in a larger company. Most of the panel members responded by saying it was up to the individual to engineer their own success in their career. They’re general response was that regardless of the size of the firm, it’s your career and it’s up to you to take ownership of it and develop it. They did not think that the size of the firm would greatly affect how much you stood out. In fact, some of the executives of the larger companies even said that it might be easier to stand out at a larger company because of the magnitude of the projects that you’re going to work on. This makes sense because while at a smaller engineering company, you may work on a project that’s the biggest project that company has ever seen, however at a larger company you may work on a revolutionary project that may be one of the biggest in the world. In both cases you have a great opportunity to stand out and build a strong reputation in the engineering industry. [Read more…] about Selecting an Engineering Company: Does Size Matter?

From Design Engineer to Manager in 2012 – You Can Do It!

January 4, 2012 By EMI

From Engineer to Manager

I have received many questions recently through the different social media outlets to the effect of, “How do I go from design engineer to manager in my engineering career?”

It’s a great question and one that many engineers ask. In my career travels as a design engineer, and the last few years as an Engineering Management Institute, I have worked with, coached, and spoken to many engineers about this topic specifically and in this post I want to offer some engineering career advice based on my experiences.

In talking with many successful engineers that have made the transition from design engineer to manager, here are some guidelines that may be helpful in your transition:

Learn How to Delegate

What do I mean by learn how to delegate? Well I could have just said, start delegating, but many successful engineers will tell you that it’s not that easy. As engineers we get so wrapped up in day to day technical aspects of projects that when it’s time to go take on a managerial role, we either don’t want to give up the technical tasks to someone else or we are so involved in our projects, it is hard to take a more “hands-off” role.

Many engineers have the mentality of, “I want to do it to ensure it gets done correctly. That’s understandable being that you are a competent project manager, however to make a transition from engineer to manager, you are going to have to let other people help you. You are going to have to take the time to teach them how to do it, in order to free up your time for other things. The best way to do this is to start by giving small tasks to your team members to let them gain your trust. Once they build up your trust, you will feel more comfortable giving them larger tasks until you can remove yourself from the “trenches” and take on more of a managerial role. [Read more…] about From Design Engineer to Manager in 2012 – You Can Do It!