Are You Willing to Do Anything to Find Your Engineering Dream Job?

I have provided career coaching to countless engineers through the Institute for Engineering Career Development over the past few years, and many of the members have very lofty goals. There is nothing wrong with having lofty goals—in fact, I encourage engineers to do so—however, if you are going to shoot for the stars, you should be prepared to do whatever it will take to reach them.

Finding your ideal engineering job may require you to work long hours, obtain certain certifications that entail a lengthy examination process, and/or relocate to another part of the country or world. Are you ready for these scenarios? If the answer is no, maybe you need to re-examine what your true goals are.

Here is an analogy that relates to everyday life. Let’s say that you and your spouse decide that one of your family goals is to have either you or your spouse stay home from work and raise your children while the other one works. You then realize that in order to do that, you will have to move to a smaller house in a not-so-nice neighborhood that is much further removed from the nearest major city. Are you ready to do that?

Here is another scenario for you. You are a structural engineer in California who wants to work on skyscrapers as a dream job, but you have only been able to secure jobs working on bridges and small buildings. Your spouse has a great job and you just bought a new, beautiful townhouse in a vibrant community. You then get a call from a recruiter with a great job opportunity doing structural design for skyscrapers with a top engineering company in New York City. Are you ready to go?

I write this post because many of the engineers who describe their ideal engineering jobs to me are often not ready to do WHATEVER it takes to get there. There is nothing wrong with that—I am not telling you that you have to relocate. My message to you is this: Figure out what the perfect engineering job is for you. Ask yourself why that job or scenario is perfect. Then, once you are clear on the why, map out all (or at least a few) of the different scenarios that might be necessary for you to achieve that job. Then discuss all of those scenarios with your spouse ahead of time. This way, should any of the scenarios come to fruition, you and your spouse are in agreement on why you will or will not pursue that opportunity.

Finding or creating your ideal engineering job is totally doable, but you have to be 100% ready to do it!

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.