Engineering is an exciting field, offering significant earning potential, job stability, and plenty of personal satisfaction. There are many different jobs available for engineers, depending on their focus. You might choose to study aerospace engineering, computer hardware engineering, electrical engineering, or dozens of more engineering disciplines.
Skills required for engineers are –
In contrast, the soft, or social skills will vary less from one industry of engineering to another. Initially, these soft skills may not seem quite as important as the hard skills, but most interviewers will pick up on interpersonal deficiencies in your interview. Further, trained engineers may struggle to obtain promotions after they are hired if they lack the soft skills described below.
Industry Skills
Because engineers operate in a variety of industries, some hard skills are vital only to specific industries. That being said, each hard skill below is important in most engineering work.
Project Management
Frequently, engineers manage teams and must integrate with auxiliary departments while trying to meet deadlines on a budget. Because of the administrative demands required of most engineers, many of them go on to become CEOs and thought leaders.
Strategic Planning, Risk Management, Leadership, Communication, Scheduling, Quality Control, Critical Thinking
Teamwork
Engineers seldom work alone; you will work with a wide range of employees, both fellow engineers and people outside your department, to bring your projects to fruition. You need to be able to work collaboratively with different types of people at every level, applying skills as varied as verbal communication and appropriate body language to goal-setting and prioritizing problems. You need the character and integrity that will induce other people to trust you and rely on you as you all work together.
Creativity
Engineering is fundamentally about problem solving and multitasking, and that means finding new ways to apply existing knowledge—a truly creative process. You may be attracted to engineering because of its creative element.
If you don’t think of yourself as the creative type, you can practice thinking outside the box through unrestricted brainstorming, daydreaming, and play.
Computer Modeling
Computer modeling is the creation and maintaining of computer models which become simulations of complex systems. While modeling is not unique to engineering, it has become a critical component in many fields where engineering is vital.
These models are used to predict how quickly a planned stadium might be evacuated in an emergency, how a power plant might behave if a critical component fails, and more. Not all engineers need the programming expertise to build models, but you will need to understand how models work so that you know what kinds of problems can be simulated and what the simulations mean for your project.
Higher Mathematics
Gone are the days of calculating by hand and with slide rules, but the existence of computers does not free you from the need to understand math. Since computers can only follow instructions, engineers must first figure out how to solve numerical problems on their own before they can tell a computer what to do.
Attention to Detail
Projects in engineering are extraordinarily complex. They involve dozens, if not hundreds, of people. A small mistake at any point during planning, development, or construction can fail. A failed project not only loses money but could also injure or even kill people.
