While many in the high-tech sector have the opportunity to work solo, dealing little if at all with the rest of their company, the time will always come when you have to interact with others, give a presentation or be involved with a development team.
The philosophy of a job for life and set workplace roles, key features of employment in the 1970s, has given way to the idea that engineers and scientists need to present more than technical ability to be successful in today's competitive environment.
An annual survey by the National Association of College Employers (NACE) asked companies to rate the importance of personal qualities and characteristics in new hires. Of the 480 respondents polled, the most highly desired trait in new recruits were communication skills - both written and verbal. Also in the top five were honesty/integrity, teamwork skills, interpersonal skills and motivation/initiative. But it's not only new entrants into the job market who need to be sure their "soft skills" make the grade. Increasingly, experienced engineers are realizing their resume needs to show more than their technical prowess.
The EE Times "2001 Salary & Opinion Survey" has revealed that among the business skills featured on resumes almost 96 percent of managers see project management as their most important, followed by team leadership (94 percent), resolution of technical trade-off (89 percent) and written reports for internal use (86 percent). The most important skill listed by engineers was having experience writing internal reports (77 percent), followed by team leadership. Other skills respondents were asked to consider included oral presentations, setting project deadlines and time management.
On one hand, industry would like recruits to have the traditional "hand-me-down" skills, but on the other hand, industry would like to see recruits with technical excellence and a broad range of transferable skills.
To be successful and to promote prosperity, engineers must exhibit more than first-rate technical and scientific skills. In an increasingly competitive world, they must help make good decisions about investing time, money and human resources toward common ends. Todays engineers must be able to work in teams and communicate well. They must be flexible, adaptable and resilient. Equally important, they must be able to employ a systems approach in their work, to make connections within the context of ethical, political, international, environmental and economic considerations.
The Work Circuit headhunter, Nick Corcodilos, says:
"I know that good managers will jump over 10 technically qualified engineers to get to one who might lack certain technical skills, but who presents himself in a way that reveals his motivation. In other words, an engineer who is excited about the problems he'd encounter in the job, and forthcoming about how he would hit the ground running. But, there's more to it than motivation. For an engineer to come across this way, he must be good at grasping and communicating the issues that really matter to the manager. So, what the manager sees is not just motivation, but the underlying ability to communicate that he wants to 'enlist' for the mission the manager is on. The social skills behind this are powerful, and they matter enormously to smart managers."
Stephanie Gordon is community leader for www.theworkcircuit.com.
