Show Notes
Welcome to the first ever Her Engineering Career Podcast! I’m so excited it’s finally launched! Together we’re going to power up your engineering career so you’re on track to becoming an expert and respected leader in your field.
You’re going to remember what you love about being an engineer and be motivated to make a difference!
Today we are focusing on the Care and Feeding of Your Engineering Career. What I mean by that is paying attention to the status and progress of your career and putting the time in to keep it on track.
I thought this topic would be a good one for kicking off the podcast because continuous care is so important and so fundamental for a successful engineering career.
3 Reasons Why Women Engineers Need to Feed Their Careers
- You’ll take charge of your career. Giving time and attention to your career is a key part of taking charge of it. Owning your career means taking care of it.
Said the other way, if you don’t give time and attention to your career, you will not have control and it will not feel like yours.
And, by the way, no one else is going to do this for you. There are people who will mentor you and coach you and want you to succeed. But ultimately the care and feeding of your career is your responsibility. - You’ll manifest your vision and gain fulfillment. Tending to your career is necessary to reach your goals and move you toward your vision. It is an intentional way of checking in, reaffirming your plan and making sure your trajectory is what you want it to be.
Your vision is built on your values, strengths, skills and passion. Naturally, moving yourself toward that vision raises your sense of accomplishment, satisfaction and fulfillment.
If you’re wondering about all these concepts – career vision, plan, trajectory, etc. – stay tuned, because we’ll be discussing them more on future episodes of Her Engineering Career Podcast. - You’ll keep your career moving forward at a good pace. Overall you want to keep your career in forward motion. Being attentive to your career is important to ensure that it is moving at a good pace. We’ll talk more about forward motion in future episodes.
If you’re not in forward motion, you may still be on the right trajectory, but your progress is slowed or disrupted. If you are lax in tending to your career, you have a greater chance of stagnating and missing opportunities.
Stagnating means you’re in the same place for too long so that your job no longer challenges you. You may start to lose momentum or get bored. And you start losing visibility; you don’t stand out anymore and people don’t “see” you.
You can see how that can lead to missed opportunities. If you’re being attentive to your career, you will recognize when this is happening and be able to prevent it.
There are several ways to continuously care for your engineering career. I want to share with you a few practices in particular, starting in this episode and continuing in Episode 2. The practice I want to talk about today is Self-Assessment.
Self-Assessment means performing your own evaluation of your career status and progress. The idea is to realize how far you’ve come (and celebrate that!), reaffirm your path, identify gaps, think about next steps, etc.
TIP: Self-assessments also provide a great reference at evaluation time, when your boss may ask you to submit your work highlights.
4 Simple Steps to Self-Assess Your Engineering Career
You can tailor your assessment in any way that works for you. I recommend that it consist of a few simple steps and that you try to keep it consistent. Those steps might be something like this:
- Reaffirm your career vision.
Think about your career vision and look at your career plans. Make sure they still represent your dreams and aspirations. And, if they don’t, make adjustments. You are always allowed to change your mind. - Get different perspectives.
Get input and feedback from a few people you trust, such as your boss, mentors, and colleagues. Even though this is a self-assessment, it is important to have these other perspectives and take them into account. It helps you be more informed and open-minded. - Perform a questionnaire.
Ask and answer some probing questions to really understand where you are and where you’re going. These can be tailored for whatever point you are in your career. Here are some examples:- Have I made good progress?
- Am I on track?
- Are my long-term goals still valid?
- What’s next for me?
- What’s the first next step?
- What resources or help do I need?
- Document your findings.
Capture all the relevant ideas, insights, and outcomes. Document them in whatever way allows you to keep track of your assessments and see your progress over time. This is good for you and your management (just in case they’re not keeping track!)
How often should you do a self-assessment? I think once per quarter is ideal.
You can do a mini version every month or prior to the times you’ll be meeting with your boss or a mentor (which we’ll discuss in Episode 2). And I would suggest a deep-dive version annually – around the time annual reviews are performed.
These steps are fairly detailed, and it might seem like a long and involved process. But after a few times your self-assessment will become routine, and you won’t have to spend excessive time on it.
Remember there’s lots of flexibility on the format, you can use the suggestions here or whatever works best for you. The act of assessing is more important than the format of the assessment.
Let’s recap: Today we are discussing the care and feeding of your engineering career. We began with the reasons why this is important, including keeping you in charge of your career, manifesting your career vision, and moving your career forward at a good pace.
Then we covered one of three practices for tending to your career, self-assessment, and we discussed four steps for accomplishing that.
Next time I will share two more practices for the care and feeding of your engineering career: Career Consultations and Taking Action. Along with Self-Assessment, if you apply these practices on a regular basis, your career will stay on track and serve your needs and wants.
You will be much more likely to reach your potential as an engineer and leader. So be sure to tune in to Episode 2 to hear more. If you are struggling with taking charge of your engineering career and would like to work with me on confidently commanding greater influence and impact, click on Work With Mary.
