Working in the field of engineering is as testing as it is rewarding. If you’ve had your sights set on an engineering career for some time, this guide will prove invaluable to help you make the most of the opportunities that come your way as you climb the career ladder. If you’re undecided about embarking upon such a career, this guide may help you make up your mind either way, by highlighting what’s expected of engineers at different stages of their careers. In either case, read on to learn how to ensure your progress in the engineering field.
Schooling
Your aptitude, skills, knowledge, and hard work are all developed in school. When you’re young, it may seem like it’s a long time until you can enter the adult world of work, but your performance, dedication, and hard work at this stage in your development are crucial if you’re to make the most of the opportunities that come your way in the future.
Those individuals who become engineers are often those with strong skills in the sciences and mathematics, as well as those with a sound grasp of languages and an appreciation of practical subjects, like art, sports, and design. In all of these cases, the hardest workers will emerge from school with the most appropriate skillsets for what is a very competitive vocation. Engineers are intelligent and willing to put in the hours to develop their skills, and this investment in your professional profile begins in school.
Work Experience
While some individuals make the move from school straight into university or college in one neat hop, others take a year or two out in order to work, earning the cash to afford to live while studying full-time. While in some subjects, work experience may be less valuable than working on your career through study, in the world of engineering, experience on a site, or in the construction industry, can be incredibly valuable.
Work experience is also a great way to help you decide whether you’re the right fit for a career in engineering. You may only be given junior, apprenticeship-level roles, but you’ll see how construction organizations operate, and you’ll be able to ascertain whether working in these environments suit you. With this experience, you’ll also be able to better connect with workers when you’ve graduated from university.
Getting onto a Course
In the modern world, there are several ways to study – and you don’t necessarily have to follow the usual routes to get your certification. You can, for instance, take online courses, which allow you to work while you study and don’t require you to relocate. This can be especially helpful for those individuals who cannot afford to take a break from full-time work. Kettering Online offers some of the most competitive and well-run courses in the field, helping you to get qualified without having to relocate and lose your regular income.
Meanwhile, other individuals will prefer to head to college to get qualified. This means getting the right grades in school before applying to the courses in the locations that best suit your circumstances. Now is when your hard work in school, and your experience working in relevant jobs, will help your application. It’s also a good time to begin reading around your subject, learning about the basics of engineering as you do so.
While Studying
Getting qualified as an engineer is one of the milestone moments in your career. Suddenly, you’ll become highly employable, and you’ll be free to take on as much work as you wish over the course of your career – either in full-time roles or as a consultant or freelancer. However, while you’re at college, you need to apply yourself to the area of engineering that most attracts your interest. As a field, engineering encompasses many different roles, including:
- Simple material engineering, which helps architects decide which materials to use in their constructions
- Fluid dynamics engineering, which determines how our pipes, sewers, and other liquid mechanisms work
- Micro-engineering, or smaller materials and construction projects
- Large-scale projects, which take an interdisciplinary team of workers to complete
- Projects that require an understanding of load capacity and suspension, like bridges and tunnels
The list above can run to many pages, as you’ll discover over the course of your degree. What you’ll need to do while studying is to decide which of these areas you’d like to specialize in and choose modules that’ll help you get that extra know-how that you can apply to specific roles when you graduate.
Post-Graduation
While many individuals choose to enter the job market as soon as they’ve been given their degree, others stay on at college, where they study a Master’s degree or work on a PhD thesis. In both of these latter cases, you’ll want to talk to tutors and professors about the best route to achieve what you’ve got in mind. Would you, for instance, like to work on the academic side of engineering? Or would you prefer to study engineering management, so that you enter the job market a level higher than your undergraduate contemporaries?
Meanwhile, if you’re keen to get stuck into real-world work after your graduation ceremony, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find a wide array of vacant roles in engineering institutions – all of which will offer competitive wage packages for those with the requisite skills to help their company. You should be choosy when applying for jobs: only apply for those you’re best qualified for and those that you’re excited to work in. These are the jobs you’re most likely to be offered.
Career Progression
With your qualifications, a job, and a clear path ahead in your company, you’ll be ready to focus more on your career and less on the qualifications that you needed to get onto the ladder in the world of structural engineering jobs. Your career will span a number of decades, leaving you plenty of time to find your niche and the working lifestyle that you’re most excited by. You may prefer to work project by project, with a gap in between, during which time you can relax and recuperate. Alternatively, you may enjoy the routine of a 9-5 office job, in which you delicately apply your engineering knowledge to problems.
Whatever you decide, you should know that the usual rules apply for your career progression. If you want to climb into higher management and more senior roles, you should ensure that you’re:
- Making the right contacts, both inside your company and outside of it, to leverage when you’re looking for promotion
- Consistently learning new things about your field by attending conferences and seminars
- Working as hard as you can, and as well as you can, on the projects that are handed to you
- Taking advantage of employee training schemes and management promotion schemes in your company
- Prepared to take a job in a different company, should the seniority or wage be significantly higher than your current role
All of these tips will help you boost your engineering career, taking your expertise to the next level, along with your official title and your wage package.
Achieving Seniority
The ultimate aim of many engineers is to achieve a level of seniority that allows them to take control of their own large-scale projects, with a large team working beneath them, overseeing the smaller objectives of the project. Often, senior positions will come with shares in the company or an offer of a position as a partner in the firm. In both cases, your wage will rocket, and your level of responsibility will, too.
Job satisfaction is often derived from the responsibility we feel when we’re working, and the level of reward that we’re given for handling that responsibility with maturity and wisdom. You can only truly handle the responsibility of a senior position in an engineering firm after having put in a decade or more of work at the lower levels, so achieving seniority shouldn’t be something you try to rush. You should be patient, taking each day as it comes, in order to slowly build your professional profile. Then, when you’ve put in the time, you’ll be able to approach your managers with the request for a senior role in your business.
Lifelong Learning
Finally, throughout your career, you should be aware that things will change. The rules of the game will alter, and the goalposts will move. Science makes advances, as does technology, and in order not to be left behind, using redundant materials and equations, you need to make sure you’re learning throughout the entirety of your career. It’s in this way that you’ll ensure you’re always ahead of the curve and able to anticipate changes in your industry, which will directly benefit your career over time.
This extensive guide shows you how you can train, qualify, and progress in the field of engineering. By using these insights, you’ll be able to plot your way to the top of your field over the course of a long and exciting career.
