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Even the Hardest Decisions are Made Easier When You Engineer Clear Career Goals

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I love dogs, I really do, but I will probably never have one, at least not in the foreseeable future. I grew up with a pet Labrador retriever; whenever I visit family or friends with dogs, I spend a lot of time petting and playing with them; and my kids are always asking if we can get one—but here’s why I most likely won’t own one engineering career development dogany time soon. To put it simply, owning a dog will make it extremely difficult to fulfill my personal goals.

One of my goals is to try to travel in the summers when my kids have off from school. I am not referring to a simple jaunt down to the Jersey Shore, but a more cultural experience like a trip to Europe or South America. Having a dog would make it very difficult to plan a trip like this. We also enjoy taking weekend trips when possible, especially during the summer, and again, having a dog would just add an extra layer to the planning, preparation, and overall feasibility of these trips.

My point in this post is that many people in this situation would go out and buy a dog. Most people simply do not have a clear enough picture of their goals to be able to resist or move away from obstacles like this, which is a big reason that many people DO NOT achieve their goals. They do things that make it virtually impossible for them to achieve the goals that they are supposedly so passionate about. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Career/Lifestyle Design, Goals/Goal Settings Tagged With: , ,

Simplicity in Your Engineering Career May be More Simple Than You Think

April 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment

In providing career coaching services to engineers over the last few years, I have had some success helping them facilitate their engineering career development through simplification. That’s right, fewer things to worry about translates to more focus on the important things in your career, like your goals and your growth and development.

Simplicity in Your Engineering CareerThe process of simplifying things in your engineering career and life can actually be so simple that we overlook it. Rather than trying to lay out the steps for simplifying things, let me give you a few examples, from both personal and career experiences.

I live in the suburbs of New York City, and our particular area has a lot of wildlife around since we live close to a pond. I often like to sit out in my backyard for some quiet time and listen to the birds, usually while reading a book, so I decided last year to bring more birds into the yard by purchasing a birdhouse. I went to the local hardware store and picked out a nice, $25, copper-lined three-level birdhouse. You could call it a four-star hotel for birds. After a few days, the squirrels in our yard had figured out how to jump on top of the birdhouse, and within a few weeks, they had destroyed it.

Soon after, I went back to the hardware store and tried for birdhouse number two. This one, a little cheaper, was advertised as a “squirrel-proof” birdhouse and consisted of a hard plastic shell covered by a green metal gage. Well, it took the squirrels about a week to destroy birdhouse number two, and I decided that a birdhouse wasn’t meant to be in our yard. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Productivity, Zen Tagged With: , ,

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

April 18, 2013 By 2 Comments

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. engineering career development networkingThey 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:

  1. Improve your people skills. People always say that you must have good people skills or interpersonal skills to be a great engineer, but the questions 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...]
Filed Under: Networking/Relationships Tagged With: , ,

Fire Your Inner Critic (and Get the Engineering Career and Life You Want)

April 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment

This is a guest posy by Iris Louwerens of Dig Mondays.

Last week I met up with a friend of mine. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, so we said the two of us should catch up over dinner and some drinks. At Engineering Career Development Inner Critic7:30pm we met up at the restaurant, and I was slightly surprised to see that she’d brought someone else with her. Oh well, the more the merrier, I thought…

We sat down at our table, and I asked my friend how she was doing. She said work had been really demotivating and that she was thinking about moving to another team. She had already discussed this with her boss, who wasn’t pleased—to say the least. As my friend was telling her story, I was shocked to see that while the person she had brought along was trying to prevent her from getting hurt, he was actually telling her that her boss may have a point. She had joined the company less than a year ago, and it would be risky to move to another team so soon. Maybe she should wait a while before moving on. More so, she didn’t have the experience the other team was looking for. He told her to play it safe, that it would be silly to put her job on the line in these tough economic times.

She agreed and decided to stay in the job that was making her feel miserable.

So who was this person she brought along? It was her inner critic. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Career/Lifestyle Design, Inspirational, Personal Development Tagged With:

Why Does Coffee Trump Engineering Career Development?

April 4, 2013 By 2 Comments

When I write, I like to do it either very early in the morning in my office (about 5 a.m.) or at a Starbucks. It seems that those are best places and times that I can focus on writing with no distractions. The last time I was at a Starbucks, something interesting occurred to me.

engineering career development coffeeI was standing on a long line waiting to purchase a cup of tea, and I noticed person after person ordering coffees and using Starbucks cards or the Starbucks app on their smart phones to pay. I also noticed that many of these people were regulars who purchase coffee at the same Starbucks every day.

They buy their daily coffee without even thinking twice. It’s an automatic MUST for them. Let’s say that a small coffee is $2, and let’s say the average coffee drinker purchases one cup every business day—that would equate to $10 per week, $40 per month, and about $500 per year. Remember, that’s at a conservative $2 amount. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Career/Lifestyle Design, Product Offers Tagged With: ,

Being Reactive is Most Likely Part of Your Job Description, But Shouldn’t Be Your Engineering Career Development Plan

March 27, 2013 By Leave a Comment

You will most likely spend a large part of your engineering career being reactive. You will react to problems that need solving, clients that need help, and evenentire communities that need engineering assistance. The way you react in all of these situations will play a huge role in your engineering career Engineering Career Developmentdevelopment; however, if being reactive is your only plan for developing your career, you may be in for a rough ride.

I have had the pleasure of working with many engineers on their career development, and one thing that I have heard time and again is “I have no time to work on my engineering career development, I am too busy with my project workload.”

This statement clearly identifies the reason that many engineers fail to advance as rapidly as they would like or to achieve their goals in their engineering careers. Many engineers are reactive when it comes to their career 

development rather than being proactive. For example, how many engineers do you know who cram for their FE and PE exams a month or so before the exam date? How many engineers do you know who are running around trying to get their Continuing Education credits just before their license renewal date? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Inspirational, Productivity Tagged With: , , , ,

The Emotionally Brilliant Engineer

March 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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 that The Emotionally Brilliant Engineerengineers 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...]

Filed Under: Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Inspirational Tagged With: , ,

Stop Moving the Goalpost in Your Engineering Career

March 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment

This is a guest post by Susan de la Vergne. 

When was the last time you complained about someone? Anyone. Your boss, the grocery checker, a family member, the stranger in the car behind you, anyone. I bet it was today, maybe just minutes ago.

Engineering Career Goals PostAnd when was the last time you complained about a thing? Anything. Traffic. Your cell phone service. The power company. Where you had to park. Was that also today? Minutes ago?

We’re very accustomed to complaining, because we’re used to being dissatisfied. It’s sort of a way of life. We get a job, we want a better job. We get a raise, we want a bigger raise. We get a good performance review, we want a great one. We make our monthly sales quota, now next month’s quota is bigger.

Getting a job, a raise, hitting our quota—we call these “goals,” but if they were goals, we’d be done and happy when we hit them. Instead, we’re immediately dissatisfied.

Ever noticed that? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Career/Lifestyle Design, Goals/Goal Settings, Inspirational, Zen Tagged With:

Public Speaking Skills for Engineers 101: The More You Speak, the Better You Get

March 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I can’t emphasize enough how important your public speaking skills are as an engineer. Depending on your discipline and specific job description, you very well could have to deliver multiple presentations per week throughout your engineering career. The quality of your presentations will undoubtedly have a huge impact on your engineering career development, specifically on your ability to advance from engineer to manager.

I have some good news to share with you on this topic. Public speaking is not a talent or gift that you are born with, it is a skill that must be developed and constantly improved. The best public speakers in the world were probably just as scared as you are to get up on stage at one point in their lives. That is not just Public speaking Skills for Engineers 2good news, it’s great news, because it means that no matter how much you fear public speaking, you can overcome your fear and shine with the best of them.

I wrote this post to serve as a Public Speaking for Engineers 101 crash course to give you some key pointers in developing the speaker inside of you. So here goes nothing: 

  1. The more you speak in public, the better you get. This is the cardinal rule in improving your public speaking skills. You must get up on stage in front of real live people and present. Please don’t stand in front of your mirror talking to yourself—it doesn’t work. The difference between standing in front of a mirror and standing in front of a crowd is monumental. You can’t capture that feeling of looking out over 20 or 2,000 people. You have to experience it several times to be comfortable with it. Every time you do it, you become more and more comfortable in front of the crowd. To accomplish this task in a safe atmosphere, join a local chapter of Toastmasters International. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Public Speaking Tagged With: ,

The Scariest Thing I’ve Done in a While and How It Can Help You Focus in Your Engineering Career

February 26, 2013 By 6 Comments

Last week, I did something that was not only scary but very uncomfortable. I work out at a gym three days per week, as I believe that keeping your body in shape has a direct impact on keeping your mind sharp and therefore directly contributes to your ability to pursue your goals. I don’t always have time for the gym, but when I don’t, I make time. When I think about skipping the gym, I remind myself that skipping my workout to work will only cause my work to be less effective. That thought process usually is enough to inspire me to go.

While working out at the gym, I bring my iPhone in with me and use it to listen to music. I am probably the only person in the gym who to listens to Native American flutes while I work out, but that’s for another post. Lately, I have noticed that in between sets at the gym, I spend time on my phone, checking e-mail, texting, or even making a call. As I became aware of this, I noticed that I wasn’t alone. In fact, most people in the gym text regularly while they are working out. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Inspirational, Productivity, Zen Tagged With: ,
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