Skills That Matter: The Reality and Importance of Learning on the Job

In a practical field such as engineering, education is tailored to a student’s future occupation. Graduates may therefore enter the workforce with the expectation that they have the technical skills they need and that the time has come to execute those skills. These young engineers may not fully understand how much they still have to learn in their field, how different a problem will seem when it occurs in the real world, and the potential unexpected turns their career may take as it develops. In this paper, we present our perspective and advice to young engineers regarding what to expect as they enter their career, and we emphasize the importance of maintaining a patient and flexible mind-set as they encounter inevitable challenges.

We have each worked at GEI Consultants for nearly seven years, but we focused our education choices on opposite ends of the civil engineering spectrum: Sonia has a master’s degree in structural engineering, and Mary has a master’s degree in geotechnical engineering. Today, we work on projects that include components of both specialties. Each of us has struggled over the years to learn the concepts and develop the skills we need to complete our work effectively. We were reluctant at first to dive into tasks we were not immediately confident performing, but learning on the job has ultimately been critical to our success.

Earning an engineering degree is no small task. By the time you obtain a diploma, you will have sat through hundreds of hours of lectures and completed many problem sets, exams, papers, and projects. Through all this hard work, you will have been introduced to many concepts and practiced skills that you will use throughout your career. You may have even had the opportunity to visit project sites and interact with practitioners. Upon graduating, with good reason, you should feel prepared to step into a career in your field.

A good education is crucial for success in an engineering career. Learning and practicing skills such as analytical problem solving, mathematics, writing, and research are perhaps the most obvious benefits. These skills will be invaluable no matter what path you follow. Undergraduate and graduate programs also provide more specialized skills, such as proficiency using computer software, which can make you more marketable when you enter the workforce.

Often, college is where inspiration strikes; coursework and professors provide the first spark of direction for a future career. Mary, for example, began college with only a vague idea of what engineering entailed, never mind the many subsets of civil engineering among which she would eventually have to choose. She chose civil engineering through a process of elimination and selected a geotechnical specialty thanks to one particularly inspiring professor. After your eyes are opened to possible career options, more specialized courses give you a taste of the types of challenges you might encounter in your field, through projects and problem sets.

Both undergraduate and graduate engineering programs provide you with a wealth of example problems and references that you may draw upon later in your career. In the midst of pressure to memorize equations for the sake of exam scores, it is easy to develop the mind-set that a good engineer is one who can calculate the factor of safety against bearing capacity to the third decimal place without error, or use differential equations to find the moment in an indeterminate beam. Although these types of skills are useful, what is most important about learning them is the exposure to different types of problems and the knowledge of what problem-solving methodologies are available. Knowing where to look to obtain the information required to solve a problem—whether it be a textbook, course notes, or the Internet—is more important than memorization or perfectionism in the long run. Had Mary known this when she was in school, she might have been a little easier on herself regarding the difficulty she had solving finite-element problems by hand. She also might have saved the concrete-design notes that she happily threw away upon completing that course, thinking that because she was going to be a geotechnical engineer, she would never need them again.

The people you meet in engineering school will be even more important for your career than the references and textbooks that you will draw upon. Professors act as mentors and may provide connections to engineering firms to aid you in your job search. Fellow students will be your colleagues, clients, collaborators, and competitors in the future. The connection to a university in and of itself will provide name recognition and an alumni network that can help you throughout your career.

When you step out of school and into the workforce, you should feel confident in your ability to attack any problem or task thrown your way. However, you should not assume that because you have a degree in the field you are about to enter, you will immediately be able to punch some numbers into your calculator and have the answer. Rather, you should enter the workforce with a solid reference list, an open mind, and the expectation that the learning has just begun.

When you enter your new position as an engineer, you will no doubt be eager to put some of the skills you learned in school to good use, but you may be surprised to find that industry is very different from academia. The pace is faster, the clients are more demanding than professors were, and budgets are watched closely. A problem that you have the luxury of contemplating over a week for a problem set may need to be solved in an hour because the contractor is waiting for an answer before continuing production. You may work late into the evening, diligently trying to finish a task for a deadline, only to come in the following morning to find an e-mail from the client about changed conditions that will require a complete redesign. Problems may look similar to those you encountered in school, but it will often seem that some of the pieces required to solve the real-world problems are missing. Engineers make many assumptions, but you may have no idea what assumptions are reasonable for a given problem.

Developing good engineering judgment is challenging for every engineer, and there will certainly be days when you feel overwhelmed and out of your league. It takes time to get up to speed and learn what is expected of you and when to ask for help. It is certainly daunting when everyone around you seems to have a handle on things and an innate sense of what is right or wrong, but the most important thing you can do in the first few years of your career is to absorb everything you touch and are exposed to. The knowledge of how to approach a problem, when it is appropriate and acceptable to make assumptions, and when you need to ask for help from a senior engineer comes with experience. Experience takes years to acquire and requires exposure to a variety of projects and conditions.

As you stare blankly at your computer screen or rifle through an old dusty textbook, we offer you the following words of advice: Do not be discouraged. Admit when you do not know something, but also give the problem a shot. Show others that you care, you want to learn how to do a variety of tasks, you are eager, and you will work hard. Managers do not expect you to know everything and may give you a job they know you cannot complete on your own, but how far you get and how you get there will speak volumes about your abilities and your motivation.

When time is of the essence because of a quick-approaching deadline, ask questions and request examples and resources to make your job easier. When there is no clear solution to the problem, take the opportunity to put your problem-solving skills to good use. Consider tough situations a learning opportunity, and do not be afraid to ask for help when you need it. If you are assigned a problem and are not sure where to start, there is a good chance someone in the office has done it before. Ask around, get some help, and then use the information provided to take a stab at solving the problem all the way through. Make assumptions, provide some logic for what you did, and then present your solution to someone and get their input. Although it is difficult, trial by fire is often an effective and necessary way to teach junior engineers, given the constraints of the working world. It is daunting but results in self-sufficient and knowledgeable engineers who can make tough decisions quickly and come up with efficient, practical solutions to difficult problems under pressure.

At times, the realization that you did not learn everything you needed to know in school can be unsettling. You may wonder, Why did I work so hard if I need to relearn everything at work? For Sonia, this was especially true because her undergraduate and graduate coursework focused heavily on structural engineering, a specialty she ultimately realized she had no passion for. When it came time to join the working world, she wanted to try something other than structural engineering, so she joined a firm focused on geotechnical engineering. At first, she was lost. She felt like she did not know anything about soil, she did not have the basic understanding that her peers had, and she needed too much help. In addition, she had to do more fieldwork than she had anticipated, and she did not immediately appreciate the knowledge she was gaining through those field projects and her exposure to different types of construction. She quickly became discouraged, as she was often working in the cold, rain, or heat and returning home muddy and exhausted after long days spent arguing with drillers and contractors. She felt as if all her hard work in college was for naught. Still, she muddled through. She took on tasks she did not want and did not have any idea how to complete. She worked hard, worked late, and never said no. She did not know where her career was headed, and at times she had no idea whether she was doing a good job or whether someone had to clean up everything she did—but she kept trying. She also kept records of things she had learned, so that she could refer to them in the future, and made notes about mistakes she made and how to avoid them in the future.

Slowly, after much frustration and discouragement, Sonia began to realize that even though it had taken a while, she could now answer many questions without struggling. She was starting to figure out the solutions to problems on her own. She realized that geotechnical engineering was founded on many of the same basic principles she had learned in school and that she already knew how to think critically, solve a problem, and work collaboratively to reach a goal. During graduate school she had learned two skills that were, and still are, critical to her development: admitting when she did not know something and having confidence in her own abilities. Both skills are invaluable at any point in a career. However, she found that she had forgotten the importance of having confidence in her own abilities during her first few years as an engineer. Development of confidence is often a turning point in a young engineer’s career because confidence is obvious to others. The more you respect yourself, the easier it is for others to respect you too.

When you demonstrate patience and flexibility early in your career, you will reap the benefits in your technical skills and in your professional development. Concepts learned in a practical setting rather than late at night cramming for an exam are much easier to recall the next time they will be useful. Learning in context also teaches you not only what is correct and works on paper, but what is practical. It did not take Mary too many calls from a contractor midconstruction to learn to draw concrete details clearly and to learn that varying both the rebar size and spacing within the same slab is a bad idea.

Experiencing the direct consequences of your actions will also put you well on your way to developing engineering judgment. Determining a factor of safety for a homework problem will not give you the ability to estimate the stability of a slope knowing only its soil properties and angle of repose. Only after contemplating, analyzing, and designing one slope after another will you develop a sense of the answer before picking up a pencil or a calculator. Good judgment not only helps you to make an educated guess at the answer to a problem, but perhaps more important, it helps you to know whether a carefully calculated answer is in the ballpark or completely off base.

Apart from the direct technical benefits, entering your field with a great willingness to learn will make you extremely valuable to your colleagues. Managers are more likely to delegate tasks to you if you are interested in taking them on, regardless of your experience, rather than if you are hesitant and limit yourself to what you are already comfortable with. The enthusiasm to learn new things is a self-fulfilling prophesy, because as you gain a reputation as a willing and able engineer regardless of the task, the more skills and concepts you learn and the more valuable you will be in the workplace. Becoming a go-to person also helps you to build a network of colleagues who become excellent resources in the quest for continued learning and development.

Being open-minded as a young engineer can also have the benefit of opening doors to unexpected experiences, which can ultimately take your career in a new direction. Learning on the job is different from learning in a classroom, and you may find that types of projects and specialties you thought you wouldn’t be interested in are more intriguing in real life—and vice versa. When Mary completed her undergraduate degree, she swore off structural engineering. Based on her problem sets, she felt that the field was dry and had too many rules, and she wanted to do only geotechnical engineering going forward. Seven years later she began designing excavation support and started to accept that structural engineering was essential if she wanted to understand and design complete earth-retention systems. She learned this lesson with reluctance, but as she gained momentum, she discovered that the structural aspects of these systems were not so boring when she understood the purpose of beam sizes and weld specifications in the bigger picture.

Engineers are not known for being outgoing and social. However, a successful career requires the ability to communicate with others, form relationships, convey findings and recommendations to clients, and sell a company’s abilities to potential clients. When you leave school, you may not realize the importance of effective communication, clear and concise writing, and the ability to connect with others. To be a successful engineer, you need to be not only technically savvy but also able to form relationships with colleagues and clients. It is important to seek out work and experiences and volunteer for them. These experiences may be technical or nontechnical; the idea is that you will learn something by participating and become part of your company’s culture.

Our advice to you is get involved. You don’t like mingling and small talk? You don’t have time to go to long dinner meetings or organize the annual office Christmas party? You do not have to do it all and you do not have to do something you hate, but if you pick something you have an interest in, you are likely to get something out of it. There are many choices: attend lectures with other colleagues, join a committee at the office, organize lunchtime get-togethers or friendly sports competitions, or attend younger member events for a local organization. Making connections with others is personal and does not always need to revolve around technical work; however, the relationships you form will provide you with potential resources. In addition, you are advertising yourself and your abilities, not only as an engineer, but as an individual. At first this may seem irrelevant, but as you move through your career, your connections and resources within the industry and your ability to effectively communicate your needs and your abilities become invaluable.

Early on in Sonia’s career, she got involved in a mentoring initiative at the office. She took a strong interest in figuring out how to help junior and senior staff members forge relationships in which they could speak freely and exchange knowledge and information in an informal setting. She invested a large amount of time; she nervously made presentations to the vice presidents in the office, many of whom she had never spoken to; and she participated in and oversaw a program that she and her colleagues developed with passion and pride. The program itself was semisuccessful, but the relationships she formed with the others on the team, the confidence she developed during the years she worked on the initiative, and the exposure it gave her within the company were surely worth the hours she invested in the effort.

Currently, the two of us are struggling with business development, learning to take ownership of selling our company’s services, and competing with other firms. We are faced with the daunting task of bringing in work for us to manage and for others to do. We need to start passing the technical skills we have learned on to others. Our focus has shifted from doing calculations to thinking about the bigger picture and bringing all the pieces of a project together effectively and efficiently. Slowly, our focus must continue to shift from being known within the company to becoming known within the industry and knowing others within the industry.

So the cycle begins again. We feel as if we are out of our league, we do not know exactly what to do or how to connect with others, and we wonder whether we are doing the right thing. We are lucky because we have been here before, in a different setting, and we learned how to overcome challenges and how to deal with the unknown. We have the framework for solving problems and we can adapt the skills we learned and apply them more confidently than we did in the past.