TECC 87: Reinventing Yourself So You Can Stand Out in Your Engineering Career

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In this episode, Dorie Clark (@dorieclark), marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review shares some strategies on how you can reinvent yourself by rebranding, and her thoughts on having mentors for mid to senior engineers and mastermind groups as part of your reinvention journey.

Key points in this episode include:

• The job that you are hired for today is not going to be the same job that you’re going to be asked to do in two years.

• Unless you communicate your reinvention to other people, they are going to keep thinking of you in that same way as when they first formed opinion about you.

• Take control of your professional reputation so people can see what you can contribute now and not five years in the past.

• Keep up with a regular regimen of pushing yourself to learn and grow and experience new things.
  

• Start to build your network early on.

• Success is up to you and not up to your boss.

• Have a mentor board of directors – a group of people you can turn to for advice and insights.

• Mastermind groups are a very powerful tool. It can be formal or informal groups or even online communities that are like an on demand support you need.

• Knowing who we consciously want or choose to spend more time with, that is a very powerful decision that can alter who we are and who we become.

And many more…

In the Take Action Today segment of the show, Clark gives three actions an engineer can take with regards to their online presence that will help them in their re-branding.

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, TIME, Entrepreneur, and the World Economic Forum blog. Recognized as a “branding expert” by the Associated Press, Fortune, and Inc. magazine, she is the author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), which has been translated into Russian, Chinese, Arabic, French, Polish, and Thai. Her most recent book, Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It.

Books mentioned in this session include:

Reinventing You

Stand Out

Think and Grow Rich

Made to Stick

Me, Inc.

Engineer Your Own Success

Resources and links mentioned in this session include:

Doris Clark’s website
The Engineering Mastermind
Reinventing You TECC Book Note (More book notes available for free to members of The Engineering Mastermind)

This podcast is brought to you by PPI providing PPI2Pass Review Courses for FE, PE, and SE Exams

What are other things you can do to reinvent yourself and stand out in your engineering career?

We would love to hear any questions you might have or stories you might share on how you have successfully made transitions in your career.

Please leave your comments, feedback or questions in the section below.

Onward,

Chris Knutson, PE, PMP
Co-Founder
Engineering Management Institute