Career Tools
Optimize Your Presentation of Numbers
Everyone knows that engineers are good with numbers. We can measure, calculate, tabulate, and report results accurately. But after you take pains to get the numbers right in your reports, sales brochures, or capital expenditure requests, readers in…
Ethics and Professionalism
Chemical engineering and, perhaps to a lesser degree, other kinds of engineering are topics of intense interest to contemporary ethicists and philosophers. In many cases, this scrutiny has been triggered by unfortunate safety or pollution incidents from the…
Want to Be a Topflight Leader? Hone Your People-skills
If leadership ability corresponded to IQ levels, every engineer would be a contender for the coveted corner office, whether that office was occupied by the company CEO or its vice president for engineering. Unfortunately, a different kind of…
Job Hunting? Avoid These Ten Blunders
During career coaching to hundreds of individuals, I’ve come to realize that the people who take longest to find meaningful employment tend to commit the same blunders. Singled out here are ten of the most egregious career-stalling maneuvers. If you…
A worthwhile trek back to the sandbox
For any of us who have kept up in recent years with the business news (happenings at Enron and some major Wall Street firms, say), it seems safe to assume that, nowadays at least, ethical behavior and personal honesty are…
Twelve Tips for Clearer Writing
Whether you are preparing a project report, an operating procedure, a proposal, a business letter or perhaps even a manuscript for publication in a technical magazine, it is a safe bet that most of' your job-related writing is intended to…