APRIL 2001  

Plot Your Career Path

A clear job description, judgment criteria, a mentor, and skills beyond the basics will help you get from point A to point B.

by John Hoschette

Ensuring you have mastered the basics for career advancement is essential to career growth and success. These  basics include developing a thorough job description, gaining and using knowledge of the formal and informal criteria by which you are judged, and understanding your company's structure.

Achieving excellence requires going beyond the basics. Engineers climbing the career ladder must add other skills —  such as making presentations, communicating and networking — as well as other less obvious career-enhancing tools to their repertoire.

Job Description — A Critical Progress Gauge

A clear and complete job description is the first and most basic step for career advancement. You should have a written description of your job responsibilities and the performance criteria you're expected to meet. Surprisingly, many engineers don't have formal job descriptions. If you're one of them, schedule a meeting with your supervisor immediately and work together to develop a short description of your job functions, including your tasks for the coming year and the goals you're expected to meet. Without this tool, you have no way to measure whether you're outperforming — or even underperforming —  the expectations of the job.

Formal and Informal Criteria — Know and Understand Both

By studying the job definitions, you should be able to determine the formal criteria by which you are judged. The criteria include such elements as technical capability, technical judgment, problem solving, and team participation.

Supervisors often fail to communicate their expectations with staff, instead they assume that employees know what's expected of them. If the criteria are unclear, discuss them with your supervisor to ensure a common understanding. Many operational problems get solved quickly when employees and supervisors simply review job descriptions and expectations together.

Schedule a career discussion with your supervisor to discuss your career plans and job criteria. Look into the future and discuss your career path within the company. Be open to suggestions on how to achieve your career goals. Sell yourself to your supervisor on how the company's investment in you and your career development will benefit both of you.

As you review and discuss the formal criteria, watch for your supervisor's informal criteria or personal interpretation of the formal criteria. For example, the supervisor may feel technical capability is the most important aspect of the job. Or, the supervisor may place more value on cost and schedule rates. Informal criteria involve the personal interpretation of the formal criteria and will vary from supervisor to supervisor.

Planning Beyond the Basics

Once you master the basics, you'll realize you may have some deficiencies or development areas that need improvement before you can expect to advance. Make these improvement areas your top objectives and base your goals on them. Write down each goal, an action to reach the goal, and a completion date. Post this list of goals and actions where it is always visible and refer to it frequently.

A number of skills stand out as being beyond-the-basics:

• Making Presentations — One of the key skills necessary for engineers to advance and become future team leaders and managers involves presentations. In fact, one of the unwritten rules of engineering is that the quality of an engineer's work is often judged by the quality of his or her presentations. A high-quality presentation builds the perception that you are a high-quality engineer. Rarely taught in engineering schools, this skill is usually learned on the job. If your presentation skills need improvement, take a class and volunteer to make a presentation at every opportunity.
  
  
• Communicating — The ability to communicate effectively, whether in small groups or at large gatherings, often plays a significant role in an engineer's career advancement. Career progress, in part, depends upon your ability to sell your ideas — and yourself.
  
  
• Learning — With the rapid pace of technology development, continuing life-long education is absolutely necessary for career advancement and survival. If you've been out of school for more than 10 years, it's time to return for an update. If you have a bachelor's degree in engineering, consider pursuing a master's degree or a management degree.
  
  
• Networking — One of the least-taught skills in engineering, networking is one of the most essential skills in the business world. Through technical and social networking sessions, you'll learn about technological breakthroughs, job openings, and other opportunities.

Get on the Path to Success

Ambitious, upwardly mobile engineers must have a career plan. Failing to plan is simply planning to fail. Review the basics to make sure you have a clear understanding of your job, the formal and informal criteria by which you are judged, and the company structure. Then, set a career plan with defined goals, actions to complete, and deadlines for completion.

Editor's Note: Next month, we'll take a look at hints and tips that help engineers who want to get on the "fast track" to success.

John A. Hoschette is a senior staff engineer with Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, Calif. He is the author of Career Advancement and Survival for Engineers, and co-owner of the CTS Group, which provides career and technical training for engineers.( ctsgroup2@aol.com)