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  • Author Author: rscasny
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Op Ed: A Good Engineer Can Find a Job in an Hour But Building a Career May Take Years

rscasny

One of the luxuries that engineers have in most regional job markets is that they are in high demand and can find a new gig sometimes in an hour. That happened to me twice. One time, I sent a guy a resume and he called me and I was hired over a 10 minute phone call. If you employ professional networking, it could be quicker.

 

But just because an engineer can get hired in a short time does not mean:

 

  • A. It's a fantastic job. (You might want to ask about the turnover in the job before you accept it. Extremely high turnover jobs have a back story to them IMO.)
  • B. It will lead to a career. That is, a position where you have an opportunity to grow professionally.

 

Careers often take years to develop. Of course, it depends on the person. Some people are quite happy with staying in one job for years. But most people change and evolve over the course of a decade and want to do new things.

 

Building a career requires more than just sending our a resume/CV and waiting for a phone call. (Or waiting for a recruiter to contact you via LinkedIn, for instance.) Careers are developed through relationships, but also through listening and learning to people who work at companies that you want to be part of.

 

I think that's why element14 is offering a Career Series of webinars focusing on companies that provide products and/or services for IoT solutions. On October 10th, we will be having a panel discussion with representatives from Microchip Corporation and The Things Network.

 

I encourage you to sign up for the webinar: How To Start and Grow Your IoT Career Featuring Microchip Technology Inc and The Things Network 

 

I really believe these people will provides some insights to starting an IoT career, if you are right out of college, or growing your IoT career if you are more experienced.

 

 

Randall Scasny

Webinar Host

Parents

  • Never stop learning.  That is the number one way to stay relevant and in demand in the job market.  Technologies come and go (as pointed out by ) but knowledge is always applicable in one way or another.  So many times when I am studying a new technology I will reinforce or deepen my understanding in other areas, not directly related to what I am learning.

     

    Do you need to learn everything?  No.  I tend to limit my understanding of many new technologies to the bare minimum and focus instead on honing my understandings of my 'core' skills.  Will this approach work for everyone? No.  Trying to increase your usefulness and employability will require you to learn and understand new technologies and skills.  Employers tend to look for very broads skill sets and will ask for many more technologies than they are currently using in their current products, as they keep an eye on many near and far horizon trends in technology and product demands.

     

    Keep learning!

    Gene

Comment

  • Never stop learning.  That is the number one way to stay relevant and in demand in the job market.  Technologies come and go (as pointed out by ) but knowledge is always applicable in one way or another.  So many times when I am studying a new technology I will reinforce or deepen my understanding in other areas, not directly related to what I am learning.

     

    Do you need to learn everything?  No.  I tend to limit my understanding of many new technologies to the bare minimum and focus instead on honing my understandings of my 'core' skills.  Will this approach work for everyone? No.  Trying to increase your usefulness and employability will require you to learn and understand new technologies and skills.  Employers tend to look for very broads skill sets and will ask for many more technologies than they are currently using in their current products, as they keep an eye on many near and far horizon trends in technology and product demands.

     

    Keep learning!

    Gene

Children
  • in reply to genebren

    Do you need to learn everything?  No.

    I agree with you.

    In our situation we are constantly learning new equipment and systems, and the training tends to be OTT in detail.

    The consequence of 4 days training (when a single day is sufficient) is a very diluted understanding of the fundamentals about the equipment.

     

    My approach tends to be to try to understand how it interacts with the varying systems it connects with, because it's usuallay these that fail or feed the wrong information.

    As you become more familar with it, you tend to know more about the the inner workings and processes.

     

    For some that have seen the video I posted, you'll appreciate that we have something in the order of 120-150 systems or equipments to understand.

     

    Mark