Jump Start Your Career: The Learning Should Never End
At the Jump Start Your Career workshop on March 25, Professor of the Practice Ron Lasser admitted that, like many engineers, he’s incredibly shy.
“The engineering field trains us to work and solve problems in isolation,” Lasser said. “But in the workforce, communicating and working well with other people is the first step to advancing your career.”
Lasser’s workshop explored how engineers with the same GPA or first job often end up on very different paths, and demonstrated what high-impact engineers do differently to earn trust, visibility, and promotions early on in their careers. There will be another workshop held on April 1 at 12:00 PM in the Burden Lounge, Room 108, Anderson Hall.
His first piece of advice was to constantly seek learning experiences. “If your job is to build circuit boards, and all you’re doing is building circuit boards, you’re not growing,” Lasser explained.
Consistently gaining new skills can make work experiences more valuable, and—especially in STEM careers—ensures that professionals advance along with the technology and tools they’re working with. Lasser highlighted how, when he graduated from college, a lot of the technology engineers use today didn’t exist. “Learning how to learn is critical to keep up. If you don’t, your experience becomes obsolete.” he said. “Look out 6 months in advance to understand what’s coming next, and put yourself in a position to be able to do that.”
Growing also involves taking risks, and the early-career stage can be the best time to take them. Lasser explained that there’s a higher tolerance for mistakes for someone first entering the workforce. Even though working on a project outside one’s area of expertise can be challenging, Lasser suggested that it helps break new engineers out of their comfort zones and continue learning.
“Reading a book about, for example, swimming, will only get you so far,” Lasser explained. “Eventually you have to get into a pool.”
He offered that working on a problem that fewer engineers are working on can also help build impactful progress in the field of engineering.
Building reliability is another key part of career advancement. Finishing projects, completing tasks on time, and communicating progress, not just results, are some key methods he suggested to build trust that can strengthen a new employee’s reputation, visibility and responsibility.
Lasser offered some research behind his reasoning, presenting the Matthew Effect, which demonstrates that early-career successes compound into larger future accomplishments. Previous research also shows that a person's first job experience can affect their career advancement for 10-15 years.
Career advancements also require knowledge about “what’s going on,” as Lasser put it. “You can’t manage if you don’t understand the processes and key values and goals of your organization,” he said. Asking questions is a great way to learn more about the “big picture” and make each project better than the next.
Ron Lasser is a professor of the practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, bringing over 30 years of industrial experience and practical engineering knowledge to the classroom, student projects, and research. He is a seven-time winner of the Henry and Madeline Fischer Award, which honors faculty members whom SOE graduate students vote as “Teacher of the Year.”