How to make a great first impression? 20

[CivilTom]

This question is geared more toward senior engineers or people within management in engineering departments. How does a new grad give off a great first impression during thier first day or week at work? What would make you think "wow this candidate was a great choice I'm very happy with him"

 

[ukengineer58]

Don't be afraid to ask the dumb question you talk About. Experience will teach you no matter how many years you have under your belt you'll still have loads of questions. I have ten years experience and I am forever researching problems asking others etc. a lot of the time questions I would probably have considered dumb when starting out. Only tip is if you have a problem to solve research how to go About it then ask if it is the appropriate way. Don't just ask how to do it without researching first

 

[SnTMan]

Take the time to understand the wheel before re-inventing it.

Regards,

Mike

 

[IRstuff]

While steeped in ancient tradition and the barb of jokes, one's handshaking ability and quality is often CRUCIAL to a first impression. A soft, linp handshake can immediately create corresponding mental impressions of the shaker. Likewise, an overly strong handshake can impact feelings of attempted intimidation and lack of concern for others. A damp one is obviously bad.

Handshaking tends to be a bit of an art, and often requires instantaneous reaction of the appropriate kind. While the ideal approach for yourself is a firm, but not overly powerful one, if your greeter is attempting to intimdate you, you must instantly crank up the handshake strength to correspond. If your greeter submits a weak handshake, you must drive through and still present a standard handshake. Duration of the handshake is also important. You can often judge your greeter's intent by their body language and hand/arm movement toward you.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[arunmrao]

Good tips provide by all. This is applicable not only to newbies, but also the experienced ones. I recently, had to fire a newly joined experienced cement plant engineer. He never joined the main stream ,communicated with others and tried to cover his deficiencies by resorting to extreme religion .










_____________________________________
"It's better to die standing than live your whole life on the knees" by Peter Mayle in his book A Good Year

 

[fegenbush]

I always look to see if the person is wearing a watch. To me, a person who wears a watch understands and has an appreciation for time, which is important to me as an employer and coworker. Not wearing a watch does not imply otherwise, but is completely neutral on the subject.

 

[IRstuff]

Or, he could be a stick in the mud; unwilling to look at alternatives.

Personally, I can't stand having something on my wrist. Moreover, I've got a perfectly good timepiece in the guise of a phone, so I don't need another.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[spongebob007]

I think what makes a good engineer is someone who enjoys learning. When I was a young engineer I would often bring textbooks home and review theory that was pertinent to my work. I was doing this on my own time. I taught myself Solidworks and Pro/Engineer. I also spent a lot of time going though tutorials for analysis software and reading the manuals. Even now as a senoir engieeer when I start a new job I want to learn as much as I can about what the company does as quickly as I can.

As far as stupid questions go, I have very little patience for basic, stupid questions. I assume people that ask basic, stupid questions are lazy and looking to have everything handed to them. I generally go out of my way not to help them much or i simply give them a short, stupid answer. I appreciate people who do their homework and ask intelligent questions. I have a job to do and I can't be bothered with a lot of inane questions. You need to balance your question asking so that you don't ask too many or don't give the impression that you want everything handed to you. Before asking someone as question, ask yourself: Should I already know the answer to this question? If so, give it some thought, go back through old textbooks or notes to see if you can refresh your memory. Is the answer to this question one I should be easily able to find. Engineers need to be able to build their resources. Might the answer to your question be found in a textbook? If it is an anginnering question of general nature, such as what does FPGA mean? can you find it on the internet? Are the other sources such as company manuals or best practices manuals that might contain the answer? If you can't easily answer the question yourself then ask a supervisor or coworker because it is better to ask than guess and be wrong.

 

[KENAT]

If one of your new colleagues/supervisors is kind enough to prepare some kind of training/indoctrination or whatever you want to call it material to get you up to speed on your employers processes etc. then take advantage of it.

Imagine how annoying it is to that person if you come up asking them questions that's in that material, or if they discover you've done something wrong because you ignored that material.

My first day on my first job I spent a bunch of time going through the 'design room manual' and related procedures so I'd be vaguely aware of how things worked.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[77JQX]

Show up in time to make the coffee.

 

[SnTMan]

Moreover if you do drink coffee, make a pot now and then. If you got time to drink it, you got time to make it

Regards,

Mike

 

[Maui]

You will be dealing with people who work in very different areas and different capacities throughout your organization. And if they've been there for any length of time, they tend to form very strong opinions of each other, as well as opinions of the root causes of problems that have cropped up but were never resolved completely. Listen to what they have to say, but don't adopt their predjudices - remain objective. This can be more difficult than it sounds. The objective person can sort through the available data to arrive at a conclusion that can be backed up by the data. The biased person usually can't. And this difference often factors into why some problems never get resolved.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[sibeen]

Before asking a question...RTFM.

 

[DRWeig]

Make a list of all things you can think of that would create a bad impression. Then, don't do those.

Best to you,

Goober Dave

Haven't see the forum policies? Do so now: Forum Policies

 

[bk19702]

I can't stress enough that portraying confidence without being cocky is golden in a young engineer as I see it. Most I have come across nowadays have an unbelieveable sense of entitlement and know-it-all attitude that I would never think of having when I finished school, and that was only 12 years ago.

 

[MusicEngineer]

Show sincerity to your tasks and respect to your colleagues.

 

[electricpete]

In terms of whether to ask questions or portray confidence/independence instead, there certainly may be room for judgement based on the situation....

However, I would tend to err on the side of asking lots of questions, assuming I could learn something useful from everyone more senior (unless and until proven otherwise), and generally doing my best sponge impression.

I have seen a tendency among a very few brand new engineers to want to prove how much they know during conversations with the more senior engineers. That can be counterproductive, especially if engaging your mouth interferes with engaging your ears. Not only will you miss out on learning, but you won’t impress anyone.


=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[DubMac]

Remember that every one of those old farts has both good and bad qualities. Learn from their good qualities and ditch the bad ones.

 

[brandonbw]

A previous project manager said my favorite line, "Anyone who thinks they know everything, knows nothing". That seemed to be right on with others who came and went on that team. Hiring people who said they knew this or that, never asked questions, and then they were let go. So ask questions and don't think you know everything. When it comes time you want to make sure you did your work right in a timely manner. Not quick and wrong. I can't believe how many time I had seen people doing grading plans completely wrong and then had to be redone from scratch. It could lead to lost weeks or even a month of time.

Another thing is that everyone makes mistakes, just try to not big those big ones. I did that not looking at every sheet in detail before a huge rush, and ended up having to replot 50+ sets of 1 sheet at 36x60!!, and have our guys go down to the city, unstaple/unfold the sets and replace each set. That was an expensive mistake I made, which I never did get yelled at for making. Lesson learned. And that is part of being new to your field, in my case about 5 years in.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

http://bwengr.com

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http://bwstructuralengineer.com

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http://bwcivilengineer.com

 

[berkshire]

brandonbw (Civil/Environmental)
At least you did not get to the stage where somebody was cutting steel or laying concrete.
B.E.

"A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
-George Washington, President of the United States----

 

[geesamand]

Wow, this is a big topic. Not a single item above should be ignored.

For a brand new design engineer in my department, I would suggest:
- Ask questions. Ask anyone in the department, not just the manager. First make an attempt to answer the question and ask someone to confirm that the answer is correct.
- Take notes. Make a design notebook, put things into broad categories, and start stuffing it with good stuff. I started by simply photocopying my supervisor's design notebook. Keep them somewhat organized too.
- Communicate effectively. Listen, speak/write, and take the moment to observe whether your message was received as intended. Note that some semblance of grammar and spelling is required to hold the attention of certain audiences (particularly important ones). There are plenty of smart engineers who are idiots to the rest of the world due to poor communication.
- Learn from everyone. Each company has multiple roles and passionate people in those roles. Find those individuals and get to know things from their point of view. Shop floor, field service, marketing, sales, etc all have important ideas and perspectives. Also take note which individuals are great communicators, great reasoners, great analytical solvers, and when presented with those types of problems compare their method to yours and possibly review your work with them before committing it.
- Be creative with perspective. Try new ideas while continuing to execute your work the traditional way. So for example if everyone uses one system to perform a task and you see another way, try BOTH. The existing way has some advantages, and unless you can show the new way of doing things alongside of the current way, nobody will (nor should they) take your suggestion seriously. Not much good if one person is doing things vastly different than the rest for no particularly strong reason.
- No engineering school teaches you how to be an engineer. It teaches you a foundation, without walls, roof, or furnishings. You need the whole building to succeed. Identify what skills and general knowledge are required at your company and continue to learn. Once you've learned all of the tribal knowledge about a particular subject, look outside of the organization (textbooks, magazines, etc) to refresh and expand that knowledge.
- Accept that your tasks early on will be more repetitive. Interesting and more complicated work comes with time and efficiency.
- Value others' time. So you've worked for an hour and a half and developed a couple of questions. Assume that it will never be a yes/no answer (after all, we've established that the "why" is just as important as the choice) and don't ambush people as they're walking to a meeting or in the middle of something urgent. At the very least consider when you need your answer to keep on schedule, and have a couple of tasks going so that you can stay productive.

That's all for now. I need to get to work now and try to deliver on these things myself.

David