In my Intro to Engineering & Design class we are working on a assignment that involves researching a career related to STEM. Obviously, I had chose Electrical Engineering (as I am very interested in the career as it is). Is it possible that somebody could provide an answer to the following:
- What are the skill and characteristics of a person successful in this career?
- Are there any Professional Associations pertaining to the job?
Also, any extra information would be helpful.
Obviously you can Google the second question, so we don't need to answer that for you here. So I will give some thoughts about the first question.
I am a chemical engineer, not an electrical or electronic engineer, but I think the general characteristics of a successful engineer apply to all engineering disciplines.
Some characteristics would be:
- An insatiable curiosity. A desire to find things out, to discover how things work, and a habit of researching things--looking things up and finding things out for yourself without waiting for others to tell you
- An ability to conceptualize and think in the abstract; to be able to take complex things and reduce them to their fundamentals, ignoring unnecessary details
- Creativity; an ability and a desire to create new things, to be inventive and imaginative, a willingness to experiment without fear of failure
- Attention to detail; a recognition that a missed detail can cause an expensive failure, therefore a desire to be accurate and get things right
There are more fundamental things of course that you can find by Googling, such capability in mathematics, science and related subjects, but I have listed above some of the less obvious attributes that make for a good engineer.