Engineering Career Development - Powerful Purpose Associates

The Importance of Surrounding Yourself With Positive, Motivated People in Your Engineering Career

May 3, 2012 By Anthony Fasano 2 Comments

I am writing this post because I feel that many engineers and other professionals fail to realize the impact that the people around them have on the success of their engineering career and their life. The people you work with and talk to on a regular basis play a huge role in your growth and development.

Early on in my engineering career, before I became an executive coach, I regularly dealt with very negative people at the company I worked for. I was always a very positive person, but working with negative people on a regular basis, really brought my energy down. When I would get excited about a new idea or project, they would say something like, “Just another project where the client is going to be a pain in the but and we are going to lose money.” That wasn’t the mental approach that I wanted to take to start a new project, but them repeatedly saying it affected my mentality.

When I went to executive coaching school in 2009, everything changed. [Read more...]

The Importance of Computer Technology in Your Engineering Career

April 26, 2012 By Anthony Fasano Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: Nancy Evans

One might think that computers and engineering are distinct technological pursuits, as people often equate engineering with large macroscopic projects while computers are seen as producing effects that are contained on microscopic chips. However, since the 90s we have increasingly seen a merger of the two fields, which is not only resulting in a rise in software engineering jobs but in the widespread adoption of computer-aided technologies into traditional engineering fields. As a result, engineers are seeing a significant expansion of options in how they can pursue work. Here are a few different ways young engineers can integrate computer technology into their careers: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career, Engineering Career Development, Uncategorized Tagged With: engineering career development

Letting People Win At Times Can Actually Help You in Your Engineering Career and Life

April 21, 2012 By Anthony Fasano Leave a Comment

In talking with engineering professionals through my coaching and consulting work, I often see rifts that occur within an office or a team. What drives me crazy is that these rifts often start due to an argument over a non-important issue. Whether it’s an argument over what color to make a specific layer in a CAD drawing or the fact that a few co-workers went out to lunch and left someone out; rifts starts for many different reasons.

When we let these things bother us and refuse to let them go, they can have a very harmful effect on our career and our lives. If you feel that your losing an argument or giving in to another person will compromise the quality of the work being done or jeopardize one of your projects, then of course you should stand up for what you believe and ‘go down fighting.’ However, if you are arguing with someone over something that, in the long run, has little importance or impact on your goals, projects, clients, etc – just give in. Yes that’s right, you are just wasting your time and energy fighting with someone over something that doesn’t really matter. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Development Tagged With: engineering career development, how to become a su, how to become an engineering manager, soft skills for engineers

At The End of Your Engineering Career Will You Say I Wish I Hadn’t Worked so Hard

April 12, 2012 By Anthony Fasano Leave a Comment

An engineer that I met during one of my speaking engagements in Chicago recently sent me the link to an article entitled Top Five Regrets of the Dying. He thought I would find it interesting and he was right!

The article is based on a book where a nurse reveals the top regrets that her dying patients have shared with her about their lives and careers. I believe that all five of the top regrets are tied into your career in some way, shape or form and it was one them that really hit home for me:

I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

“This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Development, Positive Attitude, Professional Development Tagged With: engineering career development, Engineering Career Inspiration, how to become a successful engineer

What is the Biggest Challenge in Developing Your Engineering Career?

March 20, 2012 By Anthony Fasano Leave a Comment

I have been asking this question to engineers all over the country while giving my Engineer Your Own Success seminar. The reason being is because through my new Institute for Engineering Career Development, I am trying to help engineers overcome the biggest challenges in developing their engineering career.

Here are some of the answers I have already received: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Development Tagged With: engineering career development, soft skills for engineers, transition from engineer to manager

Selecting an Engineering Company: Does Size Matter?

March 11, 2012 By Anthony Fasano 2 Comments

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...]

Filed Under: Engineering Career Development Tagged With: big or small engineering company, from engineer to manager, how to become a successful engineer, soft skills for engineers, transition from engineer to manager

How to Pass Any Test in Your Engineering Career

February 21, 2012 By Anthony Fasano 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: credentials in your engineering career, engineering career development, from engineer to manager, passing pe exam

Green Jobs For Every Engineer

February 6, 2012 By Anthony Fasano 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: graduate engineer, green engineer

Never Be Boring Again: Improving Your Technical Presentations

January 30, 2012 By Anthony Fasano 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: engineering career development, Engineering speaker, engineers giving presentations, soft skills for engineers

Anthony Fasano

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