This is a guest blog by Fernando A. Ceballos, P.E.
I’m often asked, “Why do you volunteer so much, aren’t you worried that it’s going to affect your career development?” The answer to that is “NO, why would I be worried — it’s likely going to help my growth.” However, it is a problem if I allow my involvement to distract me from my job and impact my performance. Here are a few things for you to think about.
Find Your Tribe
It is pretty typical for people to mention that it is harder to make friends after college. You either get lucky with good co-workers you enjoy spending time with outside of work or you join some type of social club. I’ve found the easiest way to find people I “click” with is through community organizations that have a cause behind them. That cause unites us and provides the initial filter of knowing that the people you are meeting have something in common with you.
I can attest to this! My wife and closest friends were all relationships that I made after joining an organization focused on a mission larger than myself.
In this episode, I will explain how you can avoid becoming a frog in boiling water in your engineering career. Nobody can predict the future and disaster can strike at any time in your career and that is why you should always strive to minimize risks in your career by being prepared for the absolute worst.
Odds are if you’re like most engineers, you show up at work each day, solve problems, go home, and then come back the next day and repeat that process. Obviously, I am simplifying things here. Within that, ‘solve problems’ generalization, lie thousands of amazing projects, inventions, and solutions that move our world forward. Engineers create extraordinary things. But what career-related items do you partake in outside of your engineering projects, and how you do you decide when or why to execute them and move your engineering career forward?