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Engineers: How Well Rounded Are You?

May 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Based on what I have seen in the engineering industry, it seems that well rounded engineers, advance much more rapidly than others.  This statement is not as obvious as it may sound when first reading it.  Wouldn’t you think that an engineer who is a design superstar that can crank out top notch design after top notch design would quickly climb the ranks?  Wouldn’t an engineer with profound managerial skills, ride those skills to the top?

It seems like what ends up happening is that the design superstar is so good at designing that they don’t end up doing anything else.  They design so efficiently and they enjoy it so much that they don’t really bother learning other skills and the company is enjoying their productivity so they go along with it.  The super manager can certainly manage people but when it comes time to get his or her hands dirty and jump into a technical situation to solve a problem, their weakness shows and it detracts from their overall managerial value. [Read more...]

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Should I Stay or Should I Go?

April 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: Robert Mote

Motagg’s Blog by Robert Mote

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robertmote

A graduate engineer has been working for two years in the drawing office and has reached breaking point. Comes to you and ask for advice, should I stay or should I go?

What would you say?

This happened to me when I was a graduate engineer going into my first drawing office role. I had been looking for work for eight months and snapped up this job as the first opportunity. It was an engineer-in-training arrangement which seemed to be another excuse not to pay me a fair wage. There was no mentoring or training, only the sense of being dumped in the deep end. I did not mind the deep end part, that was refreshing and stimulating but I did have a problem in that I didn’t understand the engineering business; the business did not reflect anything of what I was taught in university. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Calculations, Career Development, Career Goals, Professional Development, Training Tagged With:

College Engineering Students Share Your Experience!

March 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I recently read an inspirational article entitled, “Are You a Mentor? An Open Letter to All Engineers” by Ben Matthews.  Ben defines a mentor as “someone who takes personal responsibility for the success of someone else.”  Ben challenges engineers to not only help younger engineers but also better themselves through the mentoring process.  He also makes some recommendations to younger engineers, one being learn how to write, whether you like it or not! 

In the spirit of this article I have decided to ask college students studying engineering to write a brief article for this blog describing their college engineering experience and posing some questions that they have about engineering careers. [Read more...]

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Take Charge!!

January 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: William Merunka
Follow me on my journey to become a great engineer.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/williammerunka

Whether you are just starting out in your career, or you have some experience in your field, there will come a time when your career will seem to hit a brick wall.  This can be caused by a number of situations including: not being able to land a job upon college graduation, layoff at work, or even lack of interest at work due to change in responsibilities and/or work load that make you feel that you are not using your experience or knowledge.  Instead of sitting back and letting time and faith lay the path for your future, you need to step up and initiate change.  Here are a few things that you can do to help your career when it seems to come to a halt: [Read more...]

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

Career Development Opportunities: How Available Are They in the Workplace?

January 7, 2010 By 8 Comments

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Through my years as a civil engineer I have worked in smaller companies of about 250 employees or less.  There are some opportunities for career development in these types of companies, but there is typically no dedicated program or training course.  Through my presentations on career development to the different societies I have asked many engineers about their feelings on career development.  Many of them feel lost in larger companies and they feel a lack of career development support. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Career Development, Professional Development, Training

Leadership Programs: The Best Start For New Grads!

December 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Featured Guest Blogger: Angela Cristina Negro
The Professional Careerist, Managing Your Career Through Personal Development – Helping young engineering professionals navigate the choppy waters of building a career
Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/angelacnegro

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You aren’t sure what you want to do and you don’t really know where you would best fit in; what the best role for you would be?  It’s tough.  New grads don’t really have a reference point for gauging what jobs they would be good at or would even enjoy doing.  On top of that, a lot of entry level positions don’t sound very interesting.  So where are you supposed to start in your job search?  What should you be looking for? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Career Development, Leadership, Training