There are many qualities and skills an individual must possess to become an effective engineer and to have a successful career. Engineering is dynamic subject so it needs people who can work across disciplines, with others, and continually adapt to new challenges in preparation for an engineering career you should focus on developing a variety of skills, including:
Technical Competence: The focus is on having the necessary technical skills and ability to carry out your job. While an engineering education will provide the foundation of this knowledge, as technology is constantly advancing you will be expected continue to learn throughout your career.Decision-making skills: An engineer has to often balance multiple and frequently conflicting objectives, such as determining the feasibility of plans with regard to financial costs and safety concerns. Engineers must be able to make good decisions based on best practices, their own technical knowledge, and their own experience.
Communications Skills: To be in effective engineer you must have the ability to communicate, both in writing and orally. Focus on your writing skills, consider developing a competency in a second language and also develop your public speaking skills. A good communicator has influence and most importantly, gets noticed.
Leadership Skills: Leadership is more than just the position you’re in, it’s about action. An example where you will need leadership skills is during project management where you will need to plan, set priorities, delegate, and make decisions and to influence people. To help you develop these skills get involved in a civic, school, professional group as a volunteer.
Mathematics skills: Almost all the engineering fields use the principles of calculus, trigonometry, and other advanced topics in mathematics for analysis, design, and troubleshooting in their work so to be successful in engineering career you must have good knowledge of Advance/Applied Mathematics tools.
Teamwork: It is a perfect saying that a TEAM WORK IS A DREAM WORK and in the engineering career this is the foremost quality one must possess so to be an effective engineer. You will need the ability to work in a team environment. Volunteer activities will also allow you to gain experience of team working.
Problem solving ability: As an engineer your job will be to come up with the answers and to do that you need the ability to think, to look at the issues and come up with a solution. Good engineers are therefore to be able to think critically, analyze options and to create great solutions to problems that they have not encountered before.
Organizational skills: As an engineer you have to work with numerous people from bottom most level to top in the hierarchy and also need to handle various agencies from private to Government sector, so you need to possess organizational skills to effectively handle all the people around you.
Patience and Perseverance: An engineer has to most of the times work in a challenging environment and to work in such a hostile environment you must have a lot of Patience & Perseverance. One must remember that it always takes time, determination, skill and patience to become a successful person and sometimes you may get it after failure of hundred times.
Knowledge of engineering software tools: In these days all the fields of Engineering have some or other software tools to work with. These tools are generally used for the purpose of designing of projects/ machines and also allow handling complex problems with great level of accuracy. These tools also allow you to analyze faster and easier.
Ability to adapt different environments: Being an engineer one need to work in different environments, some time in extreme hot conditions to excessive cold weather conditions, from early morning to late night conditions, extensive hostile conditions in terms of language barriers, local populations etc. but to be successful you need to have ability to adapt such unfriendly environments.
Conclusion: To be an effective engineer you don’t need to master each of these qualities and skills. The successful engineer is well-rounded, with knowledge of the key skills and an ability to apply them when needed. It will take effort on your part, but the fun is in the learning and the reward is accomplishing your tasks and seeing the impact your work will have on society.
By
Prof. Harish Bhatia (Dean)
Mangalmay Group of Institutions
Greater Noida, Delhi NCR
Call us : 1800 200 9260
Visit : http://www.mangalmay.org