10 Things Engineering Students Should follow to be Successful engineers !

There are a few students who begin their undergraduate program in engineering seeming certain and confident about what exactly they need to mind as students to be able to graduate successfully and jump start their budding engineering career. Many engineering students, however, do not seem to have the foggiest notion as to what they need to take care of in order to accomplish the same. For those in the latter group, the following are the 10 things that they should seriously take to heart in order to be successful, regardless of their chosen engineering major.

1. Have fun with your engineering courses.

2. Check your assumptions.

3. Develop your creativity.

4. Endeavor to learn effective communication.

5. Seek to gain research experience.

6. Seek internship opportunities.

7. Network professionally.

8. Connect what you are doing now with what you want to be doing in the future.

9. Take care of yourself.

 10. Plan for continuous career improvement.

Congrats on Engineering Your Way through College: Now Try Finding A Job!

The engineering curriculum at many colleges is among the most tedious and time consuming of all majors.  While students in other majors can spend a portion of junior year and most of senior year “enjoying” their college lives, engineers are often up late at night in the labs and libraries working on design projects and research papers.  Isn’t it a great feeling to finally get that engineering degree on graduation day?  The question then becomes, where do I go now?
Guest blogger William Merunka touched on some similar points in his inspirational article last week, however I have had so many inquiries from graduates about their current situations that I felt this topic warranted another post.
The bottom line is that the economy is still in rough shape and most engineering companies are still not hiring, but that doesn’t mean you should give up at all.  There is a great quote by an unknown person that goes, “When you want your goal badly enough, feel the intensity of it, let it fuel your waking thoughts and actions, let it influence you in all ways possible and let nothing get in the way of achieving it.”  I keep that quote taped to my monitor and refer to it regularly for inspiration and motivation, and it works very well.
I understand that being a graduate and having “nowhere to turn” with respect to a career in your field can be extremely frustrating, but it also might provide an opportunity for other things.  There have been several discussions on LinkedIn and other sites about what to do while unemployed.  Here are a few that I would like to offer.  Please note some of these may or not be financially affordable at the time, but I am throwing out everything I have:

• Use some of this time to travel to places you have always wanted to go or visit family or friends,
• Spend some extra time with your children because you never know when a job may come along and how demanding it will be,
• Spend some time in the local libraries reading career advancement and personal development books to get ahead, or read books that you have always wanted to read purely for enjoyment,
• Look for career advancement courses at your local library (these are usually FREE),
• Stay up to date on your industry through websites, blogs, magazines, etc.,
• Attend networking events wherever and whenever you can.  There are usually fairly low cost events through the local chamber of commerce.
• Improve upon your public speaking and presenting skills through taking a course, joining a Toastmasters chapter or reading books on those topics.  These skills are so critical to career advancement and will help during the interviewing process.
• Spend time thinking of skills that set you apart from others, that you can discuss in your interviews.
• If you do take a temporary job outside of your industry (absolutely nothing wrong with doing this), look to improve skills on the job that will apply to a job in your industry, i.e. people skills.
• Improve your writing skills in any way possible as writing is so important in our world yet so underrated.  Some of the e-mails I have seen go out…..ughhhh!

Whatever you do, don’t give up and don’t compromise your true passions.  The job you want is out there and you are on the path to finding it.  The path isn’t always flat and straight, but no matter what path you have stumbled upon, there is opportunity in it somewhere, you just have to find it.
All of that hard work in college will pay off.
Happy Trails!

Helping the Younger Engineering Generation, How Can I Get Involved?

n order for our industry to continually advance, we need to keep ourselves educated and on top of our game. To do this we attend seminars, professional workshops, read professional magazine and/or journals and even return to school for a masters degree or continuing education classes. Sometimes we get self-centered and forget about the bigger picture. While we can educate ourselves, we also need to help our co-workers and younger generations so that the entire profession can grow, as opposed to just ourselves.
One of the groups of people that do not always get the most help in preparing for a successful career are students still pursuing their degree and the new graduate engineers. While there are numerous programs meant to introduce pre-college students to math and science fields, there still seems to be a strong push on increasing focus on math and science education and prepping the younger generations for careers in these fields. This push is even backed by the President of The United States and was one of the issues he discussed during his State of the Union address in January 2011.
Just because you may not be a teacher or have kids of your own, it does not mean that you can’t help out the younger generation. There are many ways that you can help give back and here is a short list of ways that you can help.
• Look for science or math competitions that may be held locally and volunteer to help with logistics or even teaming up with a project team to serve as their mentor in the competition. One of the competitions that I have volunteered with since I was a sophomore in college is Conqueror of the Hill. It is a New Jersey based science competition where they have to make some kind of robot/machine to accomplish a certain task to earn points. Each year the tasks change so it is constantly expanding. The awesome thing about this competition is that it teaches kids about the basics of engineering, and not just how to plug numbers into a computer. All of the items used for the robots are everyday household items such as rubber bands, paper clips, Popsicle sticks, CD’s, and Velcro. In order for the object to go up the hill, it is spring loaded using rubber bands.
• Another way is to help is to reach out to high schools and offer to speak to their students about engineering and science careers. This could take place at an assembly, a career day, or even an after school program. You might be able to meet with a group of kids on a weekly basis and teach them about different engineering techniques, and what engineering is all about. Unless the kids get exposed to it, they won’t know it is out there.
• If you don’t want to make a huge commitment but still want to reach out to kids, you can. February 20-26 is National Engineers Week. During this week alone, there will be many programs and volunteering opportunities for you. To get some ideas on how you can help out, check out http://www.eweek.org/GetInvolved/Volunteer.aspx The website even gives a list of 50 different ways that you can help out.
• If you do not like younger children, or just want to help out with more advanced topics, look for college groups to help out. Many college campuses have student chapters of professional organizations. For example, if you are a Civil Engineer, ASCE holds several yearly competitions including Steel Bridge Competition and Concrete Canoe. While you would need to check the rules to determine how much you are allowed to be involved, there would still be a way to help out. Let’s take the Steel Bridge Competition as an example. If you work for a construction company that builds bridges, you might be able to help the team out with the welding of their bridge and teach the students proper techniques for welding so that their bridge doesn’t fail due to a poor weld job.
• Has your company recently hired new college graduates? Take some time and get to know them a little. Having that first “real” job can be scary for a college graduate. Talk with them and help put them at ease. Tell them about how you felt when you started working, and methods that you used to calm those nervous feelings. It is also a good way for the graduate engineer to gain experience. For me personally, I love listening and learning from more experienced engineers. Times have changed so much, and more focus is now put on the technology used to solve problems as opposed to making sure you understand what you are doing and being able to solve problems on the back of a napkin. If you take the time to reach out to the younger engineer, they will listen and it may even help you re-ignite your own desire for engineering.
No matter where you are in your career it is never too early or late to help other people advance their career. It is important to realize that you can’t just think about yourself, but rather your whole industry. Yes, helping out fellow co-workers may cause the bosses to recognize their improvement and be interested in seeing how much further they can go, but it is not a reason to avoid helping them. We need to think about the greater picture and advance the organization and society as a whole. After all, having fresh competition will help you stay on top of the game.

Important Things to Consider When Looking for that First Engineering Job

This time of the year can be one of the most stressful times of an engineering student’s undergraduate college career.  Some of the things that you might be encountering in the upcoming months is: getting all of the paper work finalized for the April FE exam, studying to take FE exam in October, working on senior projects or thesis’s and making sure everything is lined up so that you can graduate on time in May.  Another stressful and important activity that undergraduates are doing is job searching.  With the current economy, it could be extra stressful as you don’t get the jobs that you want.
While getting a job for after college is important, you need to make sure that the job is right for you, and that you don’t take it just to say that you have a job.  Here is a list of things to consider when looking for that first job.

• Do they have any career development workshops or support?  Without career development, you could be stuck in your initial position for many years.  Career development support can also help you be more effective in front of clients and co-workers.  This can be covered in lunch-and-learns, in office workshops, or even attending workshops/seminars run by third parties.
• What kind of mentoring program do they have?  Will you work alongside a manager who helps mold you and offers guidance and shares their experience with you, or will they put you alone at a desk and let you “sink or swim”?
• Do they offer any kind of rotation program?  In college you take many classes, and sometimes have minimal exposure to certain parts engineering design.  Rotational programs are a good way to experience the different aspects of a project and see how different departments relate and rely on one another.  They can help you decide which area you want to focus on, and also allow you to gain knowledge on what you should or shouldn’t do so that it’s easy for other departments to execute or work off of your design.
• One of the major things to consider is the future of the position.  Are you going to be stuck in your position, or will you be able to grow with the position?  Will you be given more responsibility on a project, will you be able to run projects, or will you be a CAD technician until you leave or are let go?

While job searching can be time consuming and stressful, it is not something that you should take lightly.  This is something that will affect your future and could help make or break you as an engineer.  While it may be easy to accept a job offer and remove one item from your to-do list, it doesn’t mean that it will be the best position for your career?

BY : WILLIAM