The school, ranked 11th in the country for engineering, has about ten thousand engineering students. After speaking for the students one evening, I attended the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) luncheon the next day in downtown Austin. This is an event where experienced civil engineers gather on a monthly basis to network and receive continuing education training.
As I was sitting there eating my lunch, I noticed a UT engineering student sitting at my table. At first, I thought to myself, “Why is there a student at the professional luncheon?” Then, a little later on, the student was given the opportunity to say a few words. She gave her name and the specific discipline that she was studying and basically said that she wanted to network with some engineers in the Austin community.
All of a sudden, it hit me. I spend a lot of time in my Engineer Your Own Success seminars stressing the importance of networking and building relationships in your engineering career, and I realized that was exactly what she was doing. Out of ten thousand UT engineering students, this one had decided to be different and attend the professional luncheon, and I bet you it paid off. I would bet when it came time to get an internship, she had many more leads than most other engineering students. Why? Because she pushed herself. She did something that was probably really uncomfortable, but she did it, and she did it well.
Whether you are an engineering student or an experienced professional, in order to create an extraordinary engineering career, you will have to stand out from the crowd. I hope this one example spurs on some ideas of how you can start to do that.
This is a guest post by Anthony Fasano, PE, author of Engineer Your Own Success. Anthony found success as an engineer at a very early age and now writes and podcasts to help other engineers do the same. Visit Anthony’s website atEngineeringCareerCoach.com and subscribe to the top 3 resources Anthony has used to become a partner in a firm at the age of 27.