It's not news that the world of engineering is changing rapidly, but it may come as a surprise to many engineers to learn that staying ahead of the curve does not just mean keeping technical skills fresh and up to date.

You can be standing still in your career even as you zoom to the top of the latest technical innovations. Focusing solely on the technical aspect of your career ignores other factors that may be much more important to your long-term satisfaction and success. Ignoring these factors is a disservice to both yourself and your employer.

It's great that you're a competent-maybe even excellent- hands-on engineer, but what about your other skills? Your natural, if unexplored, ability to lead people, to think as a marketer or manage complex projects, be effective on a team, or construct and keep to a tight budget?

What about important work values such as achieving high status, making a difference, individuality? Or your interest in creativity and innovation?

These factors, when considered in combination with technical skills, can help you optimize work satisfaction and effectiveness while taking full advantage of opportunities that cross your path.

Engineering success stories involve people who were alert to emerging opportunities and made the right choices at the right time. Human brains don't have enough CPU power to constantly notice and evaluate all the possibilities that present themselves in the course of the day. We need a template-a carefully crafted career plan based on self-assessment measurements-that red-flags opportunities with the most promise for our individual career. Without these parameters, day-to-day activities and decisions are made randomly, resulting in random outcomes. Ironically, although this is not a process that systematic engineers would find acceptable in their work, it is far too often the way their careers evolve.

Career strategies
Discussing career goals and strategies when you're not in job-search mode is a novel idea for many engineers, who may be skeptical that it is too "touchy-feely" for hard-core analytical types like them. They are becoming much more comfortable with it, however, since the introduction of quantitative career-planning software that produces data about skills, interests, values and motivations. The Java-based interactive approach of CareerSteps brings both a high level of interactivity and a greater objectivity to the difficult task of career planning.

Assembling a laundry list of technical skills is only one aspect of managing your career. Occupational psychologists refer to seven common themes-data, analysis, creativity, service, leadership, things and the outdoors-that run through an individual's interests, values and motivations. Identifying the themes, or patterns, that are applicable to you provides a big-picture view of yourself that will be the basis for career decisions for years to come.

That was the case for a Silicon Valley engineer who had proven himself on the technology playing field and was now identified by the company as a top prospect for promotion into a manager slot. Online career self-assessment available through the corporate intranet crystallized his unease about moving into a management track. He realized that leadership was one of his lowest patterns of interest and motivation. That did not mean he wouldn't do a good job as a manager. He might be competent, but he would also be more likely to burn out, become dissatisfied and soon be shopping his resume among headhunters.

Increased self-knowledge allowed the individual to make the career choice that was right for him. The company avoided a wasteful investment of time and money trying to develop him into something he was not. The engineer avoided headaches and heartache and, in fact, discovered new career areas to explore related to other patterns that were strong for him-creativity and service. Now he is looking for opportunities within his company that allow him to apply his technical skills with a lot of flexibility and creativity. And he understands that it is important to him that either the process or outcome of his engineering work be of great service and value to others.

Consider skill sets
In addition to information on patterns, it is important to consider skill sets. Not all skills are created equal, and each must be examined separately in terms of ability and motivation. Long-term career success and work satisfaction reflect a close match between the scope of your work and the way in which your skills fall into four quadrants.

A small subset of your broad range of skills are those in which you have both high ability and high inherent motivation. These are the skills in your "best work" quadrant, and they are crucial to satisfaction and success. If you manage your career properly, you will end up in work that primarily exercises your best-work skills. You will be energized, motivated and successful.

"Supporting skills" is the quadrant containing the skills you are good at but not inherently motivated to use. Every job has some of these elements, but if your work has you using too many of your supporting skills and not enough "best work" skills, then you probably find yourself dreading Monday mornings.

The key is to know which skills fall into which category for you, and to compare them with the demands of the job. For example, you may not relish giving presentations, but you can perform them adequately if you are called on to do them once a quarter. If the frequency of this task increases, your pleasure with your work life will decrease-although you may not be able to pinpoint the source of your unhappiness.

"High-potential" skills are ones that you would be motivated to use, but they need more development. The contents of this quadrant would be the basis for a continuous-learning plan that will, over time, move some of these skills into your "best work" quadrant.

Finally, "low-level" skills are those for which you are neither motivated nor capable. For example, if refereeing interpersonal interactions falls in this quadrant, you are probably not a good candidate as a team facilitator. You will struggle with it, people will be angry and upset with your performance and you will be miserable. It is better to know this is not your strong suit and avoid work situations that ask you to use this type of skill. A job using too many low-level skills is a recipe for disaster.

Shirzad Chamine is founder and co-chairman of Mindsteps Inc., developer of the careersteps online career-development software. He holds an MS in electrical engineering from Columbia University and an MBA from Stanford University. He can be reached through Mindsteps Inc..

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