Be Careful of What You Wish for...

....in your Engineering Career.

This a guest blog post by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Anthony is a civil engineer, engineering career coach, best-selling author and founder of Powerful Purpose Associates.

Anthony is giving away a special webinar for Starting up an Engine[er] readers on his Powerful Purpose Associates website. Read until the end of the post to find out how to get it.

So without further ado, please take it away Anthony!

Engine[er]

For my entire life, I have always wanted a pet Siberian Husky yet to this day I still don’t have one. Why you might ask? Because every time the thought of getting one creeps into my head, I immediately consider all of the consequences and responsibilities that will come along with the dog. These consequences and responsibilities would not allow me to achieve my career and personal goals which include traveling and therefore I pass on getting a dog – every time.

Now let me give you an analogous example of a situation as it relates to your engineering career development. You’re a hard-working engineer struggling to achieve work-family balance in your life because of the amount of work responsibilities you have and hours you work in a week.

However, the reason you are working so many hours is because you desperately want to become a partner in your engineering firm. Why?

So that you can make more money and possibly work on some more interesting projects, and of course work more hours! Do you see the problem here? You are working so hard to achieve something that is going to put you further away from the balance you want to have in your life. The reason engineers do this is because they have no measuring stick or system in place to tell them whether or not a decision they are making or a position they are pursuing is right for them. That measuring stick or that system is very simply your CAREER GOALS.

Your career goals act as destinations for where you are headed in both your engineering career and your life overall, giving you a target to move towards. I always like to use the following analogy to describe this idea best. Let’s say you get into your car to drive to a project site that you have never been before; you need one critical piece of information to get there – the address!

Without the address you’d be driving in circles for a long-time, however with the address you can easily use your GPS or google maps to quickly find the best route to your destination. Think of your career goals as these addresses. To take this analogy one step further, when you come to intersections in the road, the decision whether to turn right or left is much easier when you know where you are going. These intersections represent decisions that you have to make in your career every day. Questions like: should I get an engineering master’s degree or an MBA, should I work for a smaller engineering company or large one, etc. When you have clear career goals, you will be able to confidently answer these questions because you will know which route will lead to your goals the fastest.

Your goals should act as a foundation for every single decision you make in your engineering career and life. Engineers of all experience levels should have clearly defined career goals and should revisit their goals a few times per year.

So how do you set clearly defined goals?

You must start with a brainstorming process where you list your values, including everything that is important to you in your career and life. Once
you have done this, you should go through a series of questions that will include where you want to be in your engineering career, WHY you want to be there, and of course - how do I get there? This is an in-depth process and too much for me to cover in this post, which is why I am going to give all Starting up an Engine[er] readers a free copy of a webinar I recently gave for my Institute for Engineering Career Development that details the entire goal setting process including detailed steps and examples. Please watch this webinar in its entirety as it could change your engineering career and life forever!

My goal is to travel around the world and help engineers develop their careers, which is why I am not quite ready yet to get my Siberian Husky. My goals make it easy to remember this every time I get the doggy urge. I ask you to please consider setting your career goals today so that you don’t end up chasing something in your career that brings you more hours of work, more responsibility, maybe even more money, yet it doesn’t bring you any closer to your true goals.

As mentioned above Anthony Fasano P.E., is giving away a copy of his previously recorded webinar entitled Goal Setting for Engineers: Setting Yourself Up for Continued Success in Your Engineering Career just for Starting up an Engine[er] readers which provides a step-by-step process and examples for setting clear career goals. Get it at PowerfulPurpose.com. The steps in this webinar will help you to ensure that you set goals that are in alignment with your true desires to help you create an exciting and extraordinary engineering career.