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Mackay's Musings

Posted: 7/05/2013 2:01:56 AM

How to Write an Outstanding Engineering Resume

Dear Colleagues

I believe we have all had what we considered an excellent resume (cv) rejected at some time or other in our career. While I am not suggesting that you need to leave your current good job; it is good to keep in mind what is required and perhaps, in these uncertain times, to help a buddy who may need some support in writing his or her resume. This skill is vital whether you are an electrician or a chief engineer.

If you do an Internet search for ‘resume or cv writing’, you will have thousands of links – all guaranteeing you a top job. This short note is to help you create a winning engineering cv with a business edge. Which I believe is vital to success.

What is a Resume?
It is essentially a one-page summary of who you are and why your skills and know-how are aligned with the job under offer. The key element is to understand your audience (interviewer or would-be employer) and to market yourself in an eye-catching way which reduces the perceived risk of your would-be employer.

Different audiences require different information in your resume. You have to compete with many other resumes and ensure that your write-up hits the target and gets the potential employer reaching for the phone to talk to you further.

The content is not as important as the way you present it. I am not suggesting you lie, cheat or steal to get the job you want; but you need to carefully consider what the would-be employer is after.

Suggestions, Suggestions and more suggestions
Some suggestions for writing your next resume.

• Focus on what the job requires. A generic cv will never make it.
• Keep the overall document simple and easy to understand.
• Ensure your grammar and spelling is 100%. The tiniest of mistakes here can poison an otherwise good resume. Get a competent friend to check this aspect.
• Avoid excessive information about you which is not related to the job. You are probably detailed-oriented but employers don’t have time to read through masses of information.
• Leave lots of white space between sections. Balance, symmetry and a professional appearance are critical. White space between sections is a good thing. You want the feeling of spaciousness. Bold and italicized print is fine, if done in a way that is complementary.
• Preferably format in block style using bullets. Avoid long drawn out paragraphs and ensure they have fewer than six sentences. Concentrate on providing action oriented words showing how you clearly benefited your previous organisation and had clear responsibility for an outcome.
• A short summary at the top of your document giving your key skills is useful to get the reviewer quickly up to speed with who you are and what you can do.
• Jobs should include the name of employers, dates of employment and location. Watch out for giving the impression you are a job-hopper. If you are a job-hopper, you need to justify why you left the jobs. Honesty is always vital here.
• Focus on your strengths rather than tasks you don’t enjoy doing. Demonstrate integrity with what you do. It is pointless applying for a job where you are going to be engaged in tasks you would hate.
• Try and link your previous jobs to positive business achievements (increase in revenue or profitability or outstanding products or time saving solutions).
• Remember that a truck load of qualifications is pretty useless when not linked to specific experience and results.

I like Leonard Bernstein's wry comment: To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

Thanks to Elizabeth Lions of the IEEE for an excellent article on the topic.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Mackay’s Musings – 21st May’13 #522 
125, 273 readers – www.idc-online.com/blogs/

Posted: 6/05/2013 9:10:35 PM

Engineering Innovation by Stealth

Dear Colleagues

As you well know – many engineering companies talk about their incredibly innovative products and services; but these are often anything but innovative. Many companies avoid innovation until they are condemned to the scrap heap. And by this time it is too late.

Innovation is one of the key building blocks of a successful company. And perhaps one of the most uncertain and difficult.

Early Exposure Kills Innovation
The challenge when you try and innovate is that often early release of your idea within your company will attract the doomsayers. Many remarking that it is a stupid idea or something that has no chance of success. These comments are often unreasonable but people are somewhat jaded by the talk of innovation in terms of ideas and need to be convinced. The trick thus is to build up a more cast iron case for success of your innovation to ensure it hits the light of day and is a successful product or service.

How many times have you had a great idea for an innovation which are you enthusiastic and passionate about and then had cold water poured on it from a disbelieving boss or colleague?

You Need to Check First
So when considering releasing a particularly innovative idea for an improvement to an engineering system, you should check that:

• You have done detailed stealth testing of your innovation. This requires you to test your innovation out extensively so that you have considerable support in terms of data and operation. But it needs to be done quietly and as extensively as possible without alerting any of the negative forces or opposition.
• You have all the data to prove it has a good chance of working. An airy fairy idea is not an innovation. You need hard data, demonstrated research and costings.
• Support from the middle and lower echelons of the company. This is where you will obtain the necessary resources, support base and who understand what your idea is about. It is not always likely that the top management will understand the innovation that well (apart from the financial savings you will make).

Next time; before you release your innovation consider whether you have built up a strong case for it by stealth.

Thanks to Paddy Miller, an old professor of mine, for a great concept.

Remember as Charles Lamb points out: There is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident.

Yours in Engineering Learning

Steve

Mackay’s Musings – 14th May’13 #521 
125, 273 readers – www.idc-online.com/blogs/

Posted: 6/05/2013 9:00:01 PM

Killing Your Engineering Darlings – Getting rid of products and services which don’t add value

Dear Esteemed Colleagues

Perhaps you are not running a small (or large) business selling products and services; but you are undoubtedly offering some range of services or skills in terms of your job (e.g. electrical or mechanical engineer or technician working in a mine or in a power plant).

The Killing Ground
We all have heard of large companies ‘canning’ or killing off products and services which they believe have become unprofitable. You only need to think of the slew of magazines (and newspapers) which have disappeared from the corporate landscape. I am also sure you can  clearly recall some engineering product (PLC, instrument, power supply, pump….) which the manufacturer has decided to cull and no longer offers. Often (as we all know); they kill off a product or service which they then hastily re-introduce due to the market backlash.

Decisions such as this are never easy. However, they are an inevitable part of life and business. And your engineering career.

Product or Service or Indeed, Part of your Engineering Career
No matter how hard you have worked on a particular product or service, there will inevitably come a time when you have to get rid of it. This may also apply to the range of services or skills you offer in your engineering career. Sometimes; a skill or competency that you offer becomes more hassle than it is worth (perhaps due to lack of demand from employers, competition from others or overwhelming government regulation and red tape). We have all heard the comment that one has quoted for a job at a reasonable rate but then ended up working for a few dollars per hour due to the subsequent unreasonable demands made by the employer or client.

How to Decide on When to Kill
A few suggestions on culling your product/service or marketable career skill.

1. Apply the 80/20 Rule
List your product and services (and career skills) and work out which product and services generate 80% of your income. You will in all likelihood find that 20% of your products or services generate 80% of your profits (or personal income). Paradoxically enough, 80% of your products/services may generate only 20% of your profits. Examine these ones and decide on which ones to cull.

2. Avoid Emotional Attachments
Avoid the emotional connection to a product or service (or indeed a career skill); if it is not paying its way. We always have a love for our first born (product, skill or service). But it has to stack up in the cold hard business world.

3. Look with New Eyes or a Fresh Perspective
You may need to get an unbiased colleague to look at what you offer from a fresh perspective in a clinical way in terms of what is performing and what isn’t. Often new owners of a company; simply look unemotionally at each product or service and then terminate them forthwith. Similarly, a new boss may look at what you were doing in terms of your skills and abilities and alter your job to maximise your effectiveness.

Thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald April 4, 2013 for an interesting read.

Note what Friedrich Nietzsche remarks:  What does not kill me, makes me stronger.

Yours in Engineering Learning

Steve

Mackay’s Musings – 7th May’13 #520 
125, 273 readers – www.idc-online.com/blogs/

Posted: 6/05/2013 8:13:58 PM

Do You Really Understand Ohm’s Law ? A Simple Question

Dear Colleagues

No matter what your engineering discipline - you would have learnt about Ohm’s Law at some time or other (even at school). Herewith a simple application question which tests your conceptual knowledge.

Ohm’s Law
As we all (should) know, Ohm’s Law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points with the following formula:

I = V/R

where I is the current through the conductor in units of amperes (A), V is the potential difference measured across the conductor in units of volts (V), and R is the resistance of the conductor in units of ohms. (Thanks Wikipedia).

Do you Understand Ohm’s Law?
An electrician opens the control panel of a 3-phase resistive electric furnace while it is in operation and accidentally receives a shock from one of the 400 Volt lines inside the panel, while the furnace is drawing current (of say 100 amps). This is situation A.

The furnace is now switched off; but the electrician (being an idiot) accidentally touches the same place before (situation B) and gets another shock from the lines feeding the control panel. Assume everything is the same for both situations (skin resistance/point of contact/humidity).

Which was the more intense shock for the electrician ? Situation A or B ?

The Answer
The answer has to be Situation B where the voltage has gone higher due to lack of load (no current being drawn) of the furnace. The 100A current in the first situation A has no direct relevance (apart from being a red herring).

A few Parting Comments

• The amount of current required to cause an electrical shock is tiny compared to the current drawn by the furnace.
• The shock you receive is really dependent on your own resistance and the contact voltage. There is a higher voltage present for the second situation as there is no load.
• A resistive furnace was referred to to avoid confusing with phase angles between current and voltage for an inductive furnace.
• One should really consider peak voltages (not rms) as per above and line to ground (not line to line voltages); but this would make no difference to the answer.
• Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because the first situation A has a 100 amps flowing through the circuit; that this level of current is likely to go through you if you touch a live part.
• The resistance of the human skin can vary depending on moisture and open wounds; so the amount of current flowing through your body can vary. So being wet would cause a considerably greater shock than being dry. It only takes 20mA to stop your heart. Oddly enough, someone mentioned to me that he understood that higher currents won’t necessarily stop your heart but put you  into a convulsion thus sometimes helping you to shake yourself free from a high voltage source.

Thanks to John Reid for posing the question.

As Elbert Hubbard wryly observed: You can lead a boy or girl  to college but you can't make them  think.

Yours in Engineering Learning

Steve

Mackay’s Musings – 30th April’13 #519 
125, 273 readers – www.idc-online.com/blogs/