Pro Tips That Will Help Advance Your Engineering Career

According to the U.S. Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics, “employment opportunities in the architecture and engineering industries is projected to grow 3 percent from 2014 to 2024, adding about 67,200 new jobs. The median annual wage for architecture and engineering occupations was $76,870 in May 2015.”

Together, these statistics tell us that engineering continues to be a career path that today’s students can pursue with confidence. However, just taking the right classes in college doesn’t ensure that you’ll go on to have a successful career in engineering. Whether your specialty is aerospace, chemical, electrical, or mechanical, building a long-lasting engineering career requires a constant search for new development opportunities.

So how does one actively participate in a career while also making sure that they’re doing what it takes to be prepared for the next rung of opportunity on their career ladder?

To help answer that question, we’ve assembled some of the best tips we could find from engineering professionals as well as career development experts. Keep reading to learn what they are as well as how the Professional Development Center at Glendale Community College in Montrose can facilitate your journey toward bigger and better things!

Tips For Advancing Your Engineering Career

Set Career Goals

The daily grind of an engineering professional’s life can make it difficult to look past the present, but setting long term career goals is absolutely essential for career advancement. “…if you don’t set any goals for yourself you’ll get caught in this cycle where you complete your projects but you don’t really know where you are going,” explains Anthony Fasano, author of Engineer Your Own Success: 7 Key Elements to Creating an Extraordinary Engineering Career. “I always tell engineers to imagine they’re going to a new project site for the first time. You need the address and you need to map out your route or else you probably won’t end up where you want to be. The same principles apply in your career.”

Embrace Networking Opportunities

It’s also fairly common for engineering professionals to skew slightly introverted, meaning simply that they love to be left alone to tackle hard projects with their full focus. However, interaction with peers both inside and outside their particular department is very important for building career opportunities in the future. “Start with groups specific to your career, within the groups for your discipline, like the American Society of Civil Engineers or the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. From there, branch out to general groups like The National Society of Professional Engineers or even community groups like your local chamber of commerce,” suggests Fasano.

Practice Communication

It’s a joke heard regularly in engineering circles (or among those who love them): engineers do numbers, not words. However, being an effective communicator is an essential skill for engineers who want to advance into a management, executive, or even ownership position at some point in their careers. Yes, this non-technical skill can be the make-or-break factor when being considered for advancement opportunities! Leadership, team building, and written communication training can all be helpful in this endeavor.

Develop New Technical Skills

What happens to water in a pond that isn’t moving? It becomes stagnant, stinky, and unusable. The same thing happens to your career (and to a larger degree, your intelligence) if you don’t take the time to add new skills to your repertoire. Don’t let one certification, licensure, or software package stand in the way of a promotion you otherwise deserve!

Gain New Technical Skills At The Professional Development Center

We offer beginner, intermediate, and advanced training in all of the following engineering knowledge areas:

• Mastercam®
• Autocad
• Catia V5
• Smartplant®
• Solidworks
• Unigraphics

Contact us today and start gaining the technical skills to take your engineering career to the next level!