How to Pass Any Test in Your Engineering Career

February 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: William Merunka, EIT, LEED AP

While we may not like it, we face many tests in our engineering career. These may be exams for specific certifications, a test of your negotiation skills when trying to land a major client, or even your debate skills when trying to convince a town to approve a major construction project that you have spent countless hours on to develop the best environmental and economic design. No matter what kind of test you are faced with, if you are not prepared, your chance of passing will not be that great. In this article I will discuss a few steps that you can take to get prepared. While my examples will relate closely to the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam that I recently passed, these steps can be applied to any kind of test.

Know the rules/guidelines: It is important to know the rules and guidelines that need to be followed. Familiarize yourself with these guidelines so you know exactly what you are expected to do and how you need to do it. What tools/references are you allowed to bring, and which ones are you not allowed to bring. For academic exams, it is important to read admission guidelines. It would be terrible to spend countless hours studying for an 8 hour FE (also referred to as the EIT) exam only to be turned away because you arrived too late or you leave your admission ticket and/or personal identification at home. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Development, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

How LinkedIn Can Help You In Your Transition from Engineer to Manager in Your Engineering Career

February 16, 2012 By 2 Comments

This year we’ve been focusing our blog here at Powerful Purpose Associates on helping engineers make the leap from engineer to manager.  One critical factor in advancing from engineer to manager will be your ability to develop relationships and bring in new business to your firm.  In fact, the CEO of a reputable engineering company recently told me that currently when hiring, they are looking for well-rounded engineers with these skills, whom he referred to as seller-doers.

I have found the following to be important in successful relationship building and subsequently business development: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Development, Professional Development, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Green Jobs For Every Engineer

February 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

Featured Guest Blogger:  Nancy E.

While engineers are in high demand across several industries, there is no place that engineers are wanted more than in the field of green or renewable development and energy. As both businesses and individuals strive to live lives with smaller carbon footprints, the need for advanced sustainable practices that can reach consumers on a wider level only continues to grow. So for those in the field of engineering, or those that are considering entering the field, look into the following positions to achieve greater career longevity as well as higher salary rates:

Geothermal Engineer

As renewable energy continues to develop, the need for geothermal operations engineers is only going to continue to grow. As a geothermal engineer, you will need to be able to work with plant workers to ensure that plant operations and energy production is on schedule. However, unlike several traditional fields of engineering, to become a geothermal operations engineer you will need more specialized training. So if you are interested, see if a local college offers courses in this field to strengthen your skill set. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Development Tagged With: ,

Never Be Boring Again: Improving Your Technical Presentations

January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: Susan de la Vergne

Life is too short to sit through one more boring technical presentation in your engineering career.  Yet there you go, off to another one.

Technical Presenters

It’s a design review or project update, a test planning meeting or a problem solving session, and you know what you’re in for:  an hour in a dimly lit room, staring at projected bullet lists of talking points as well as the occasional “eye chart,” all the while listening to a sincere presenter cram as much information as possible into the little time he or she has.

There’s a perfectly understandable reason we find ourselves, more often than not, at boring technical presentations, and it is this: engineers and technical professionals are subject matter experts in their fields, but not, alas, expert presenters or public speakers.  They know their material, often at a very detailed level, and they’re pressed for time, eager to compress as much knowledge into as little time and space as possible in the name of efficiency.  They value content over form, prefer certainty over uncertainty, and determinism over ambiguity. 

These characteristics make them successful engineers, but being a good presenter calls on a different set of abilities—the ability, for example, to detect confusion in the audience and make adjustments on the fly, or the ability to manage a heated discussion when it erupts. 

What skills help you to do these things? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Development Tagged With: , , ,

Transitioning From Engineer to Manager : Engineering Career Advice from a Panel of Engineers that Have Made the Leap

January 26, 2012 By 2 Comments

Last week I had the pleasure of attending and participating in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Eastern Regional Younger Member Council (ERYMC) in Nashville, Tennessee.  The conference overall was awesome, but in this post I wanted to summarize the engineering career advice shared in the Saturday afternoon panel where three experienced engineers explained how they transitioned from engineer to manager.

The following is the advice that the three panelists shared:

  • You know you are ready to make the leap from engineer to manager when you feel like you are looking for something more; you want to contribute on a larger scale.
  • They all had a desire to move into engineering management position; they didn’t “have-to.”
  • You have to look at the big picture when you become a manager; look at the forest not the tree.
  • Try to get your employees to also look at the big picture. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Engineering Career Development, Leadership Tagged With: , ,

How to Start an Engineering Company: Owning and Managing an Engineering Business Through a Tough Economy

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The following is a brief summary of the 1-23-2012 session of the Engineer Your Own Success Radio Show for engineers.  You can listen to the entire show on our archives page.

During the latest session of my Engineer Your Own Success radio show I had the opportunity to interview Rick De La Guardia owner of DLG Engineering to find out not only how to start an engineering company, but how to run an engineering company that thrives in any economy.

To give you some background, Rick De La Guardia is founder of DLG Engineering, Inc., a structural consulting firm, whose goal is to educate and raise awareness of the importance of the proper design, review and installations of our nation’s building envelopes. He obtained his bachelors of Science in Architectural Engineering from the University of Miami and currently serves as president of the University of Miami College of Engineering Alumni Association.

Rick took a job in a very specific field of building envelope consulting out of college and when he realized that he wasn’t being compensated fairly for his abilities he left the company and started his own company.

Below are the questions in bold that I asked Rick as well as his responses directly below the question: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Company Owners Tagged With: , , , ,

Transitioning from Engineer to Manager: How to Manage Engineering Professionals That Have More Experience Than You

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The following is a brief summary of the 1-16-2012 session of the Engineer Your Own Success Radio Show for engineers.  You can listen to the entire show on our archives page.

During the latest session of my Engineer Your Own Success radio show I had the opportunity to coach a younger engineer (Mary) who was facing the challenge of having to manage or oversee a group of more experienced engineering experts.  This is a challenge that many engineering professionals face when transitioning from engineer to manager.

To give you some detailed background, Mary works for a large engineering company and is in charge of coordinating the preparation of large technical reports.  This includes the oversight of several experienced technical experts to ensure that they all submit their sections of the report on time.

Mary felt disrespected by these experts, and thought that her age and sex may have contributed to their lack of respect.  The experts showed this lack of respect by not submitting their work by the proposed deadline.

Based on our discussion, I provided Mary with the following recommendations: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career, Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

Five Reasons Engineers are Built Into the Future

January 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: Eugene S. Please

The seemingly go-nowhere job market is making many individuals think twice about pursuing higher education. Those interested in engineering are certainly no exception, as engineering positions waned in an otherwise industrialized world intimidated by a bad economy. But aspiring engineers ought to recognize that, while demand for their potential talents is currently down, their role in the 21st century is anything but irrelevant. The following are five reasons why you can most certainly count on the demand for engineers in the decades to come:

Infrastructure Needs Improvement

Across the United States of America, bridges are disintegrating, sewers are sinking, and other civil necessities continue to degrade with any rehabilitation. Millions of improvements to infrastructure wait to be made when the money to make them becomes available. For every improvement, there will be a team of engineers there making the big on-the-grounds decisions. Extend this worldwide, and it’s easy to see how many engineers are going to be needed.

The Environment is Changing

Whether humans are the cause or not remains a matter of debate, but the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that Earth’s environment is changing, at least as far as human survivability is concerned. Seaside cities will see more floods, while urban areas under arid conditions will continue to heat up. To ensure these places remain inhabitable, engineers will be busy designing new ways to survive the unforgiving forces of Mother Nature. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Tagged With: ,

Develop YOUR Own Winning Team to Boost Your Engineering Career

January 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: Suzanne E. Pylant, EI, A.M. ASCE, Spylant Consulting, LLC

 Aren’t you just sick and tired of articles entitled:

  • 10 things to make you a better engineering manager
  • How to work more efficiently under stress
  • Top 3 ways to manage your boss/staff
  • How to become a successful engineer

And I could go on and on with self help topics, tips and how to’s on every website you visit until you’re regurgitating them on the floor in

Engineering Career Team

full color print like yesterday’s bad news. Most of us are too busy and many of us have LONG surpassed information overload (especially in this current economic environment) so we basically ignore any further published mental molestation of our maxed out days. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Career Development, Engineering Career Tagged With: , , , , , ,

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

January 4, 2012 By 2 Comments

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 career coach, 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:

From Engineer to Manager

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...]

Filed Under: Career Development, Leadership, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,
« Older Posts