Balancing the Three Career Dimensions

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The junior engineers’ most important goal is to balance the three aspects of an engineering career: technical ability, social skills and stewardship of the profession. Each aspect can be broken down into discrete parts. Each aspect can be focused on like an individual skill. Neglecting either one can cause a loss of opportunity.

First, junior engineers should be increasing their technicalability. To increase your technical ability, use your own time to review the standards, criteria or design manuals of your discipline. Your knowledge base will quickly increase by doing this for one hour a day.Use your lunch break. Reviewing plans or reports that have already been completed by your managers is another way of increasing your technical knowledge. This will give you insight into how design criteria are implemented into the final product, which is a construction plan set or design document.

Second, focus on developing your social skills. Junior engineers may be in their first professional job out of college. Coming out of college you have no real experience on how to interact in a professional environment. The first part your social skills to improve is verbal communication. The only avenue for practicing this, in a safe setting, is a Toastmasters group. Toastmasters groups have a session called Table Topics, where you give an impromptu speech for 1-2 minutes. The impromptu speeches teach you to slow down, clarify your thinking, enunciate your speech and organize a line of reason. The effect bleeds over into your daily conversations. It’s more than removing “ums” and “ahs” from your language. Speaking with a clear line of thinking greatly enhances the credibility of your argument. Once you’ve developed the ability to speak up, you then need to learn when it’s best to stay quiet. This can only come from paying attention to the setting you’re in. Sometimes you’re just there to see how things are done, not to speak out of turn. It shows maturity to recognize the limits of your experience and when your input is not needed. Written communication is next, but that will be cover in another article.

Third, practice stewardship of the profession. This may be the area that gets neglected the most. Engineers are trusted by society to build infrastructure and enhance quality of life. Previously I discussed The Four Types of Problems all Engineers Must Solve. The final problem discussed in that article was something neither your company or your industry have solved. These are the problems that can define a worthy career. Stewardship can also be fostered by joining a professional society such as ASCE and serving on the board. These board positions take you through the cycle of leadership within that organization, exposing you to a boarder network. This broader network will lead to greater opportunities to grow the profession.

Last, you should develop a curiosity for the profession beyond the above three areas. Learn about the built world outside of your area of expertise. Civil engineering is a fascinating and important field. You should feel privileged to tell people you’re an engineer. I do.

Action Item: Think of the three aspects of an engineering career. Prepare and execute a plan for balancing and growing in all three areas.