Once you have gained employment with an engineering firm or tech company as an engineer, you have achieved a base level of competence. However, for continuous growth in your engineering career and to become a specialist in a technical area, you have to engage in some serious career planning. Here are some tips to get new success levels throughout your engineering career.
Progressing in a specialist technical area of an engineering job is not an easy task. You have to do comprehensive career planning to assist your professional achievement. How does a plan help? Having a career plan in place ensures that you can assess your progress against the goals and objectives that you have set for yourself. This also means that setting an objective is important to make sure you have a destination to your professional journey. It will help you remain at the forefront of your career.
Career Planning
The first step of planning should be dedicated towards identifying the areas of the profession that you wish to explore further. Plus, you should be able to identify the skills that you possess relevant to your interested branch of career. These skills should prove to be your best friend and asset in career progression.
- Once you have identified your areas of future specializations it’s time to set for yourself an action plan with realistic and achievable objectives. Instead of trying to scale the Mt. Everest in one go, climb it step by step and in portions. You will have greater chances of success. This actually means that instead of aiming for the final goal it is best to have intermediary objectives that plot your path to the final goal and it is vital that you set yourself realistic timescales for each step.
- Be aware of the relevant qualifications required to push you in the upper spheres of the engineering career and include them in your career plan. Whether it is a MBA or an M.Tech, you will have to gain new qualifications in order to be better qualified for applying to high level positions like VP Engineering. Once you progress, your newly earned skills and knowledge will gain importance. Being up to date is highly important to make sure you remain at the forefront in the engineering job market. Your updated skills will give you a sense of job security by combining the expertise with a growing experience to maximize your employability.
- Networking with other employees and mentoring your juniors is an excellent way of progressing further. When you mentor juniors you yourself get to learn something new and hone your existing skills and expertise. For many, helping others achieve their goal also leads to a sense of achievement.
Life is all about achieving goals for a winning career. Now days, institutions are flooded with many different courses for the students. After completion of education at school, nearly every one of them wants to build up their future as upcoming engineer. As everyone is attracted by this career option, one thing that can upset is lack of career progression which may less chances of getting job.
So, if you want make progress in your engineering career, below are things you could do to progress your career without delay:
Do your Own Self Evaluation
Keep calm and do an honest judgment of your choice and preferences. You should assess yourself that what are your weaker areas and in which areas you do really well. Chances are your strengths will far be more important than your weak spot.
So, if you stuck somewhere, don’t panic because all is not lost.
Make it a Priority
If career progress in engineering matters to you, make it a priority rather than being confused. If you have chosen engineering just because of your passion then like anything worth having it requires an investment of energy and your precious time.
Engineering has not only meant for getting you into a good job but all you can do is giving priority to job or business.
Make it clear!
Challenge Yourself
See your own qualities and attributes which others can often see. Take feedback from your friend circle about your abilities or in which you are the best because it is the best ever way to obtain these insights.
Challenge yourself by asking different questions of your engineering field to really see how best to move ahead. Explore your attitude, aptitude and interest to see your route ahead.
Rise Above All Obstacles
There are ups and downs in every career, but it is necessary to think about this, to reflect and try to progress.
Make decisions to rise above all obstacles in your engineering career. Try to find the right opportunities as there are fewer opportunities around in this career. Whether you are in mechanical, software, technical or in any other field, try to the best among all.
Thus, there are many different aspects of a career. But people often wrongly assume that the only way to progress your career is to move into a new field. As if engineering students fail to get jobs of their choice in multinational companies, IT sector etc they move towards banking sector, designing and any other.
So, to acquire better career progression in engineering career, you all need to do is get involved in a project to broaden your experience. And make valuable decisions with long term in mind.
If at some point of time in your engineer career you come to a conclusion that your progress is getting hindered by your current role, come back to your career goals and reroute the journey to those goals. It means you need to refocus.
Author Bio:Saurabh Tyagi is a career author with plenty of firsthand experience in the job and recruitment industry. He writes for various leading blogs on career, recruitment, jobs and technology related themes. He is also a budding digital media enthusiast with special interest in content marketing and social media.