Not too long ago I was searching around on Monster.com and Indeed.com for positions that use an electrical engineering degree but weren’t necessarily the “lab coat in the basement” type technical person only. I’m highly interested in technical sales and marketing, but I wasn’t sure how to make the bridge from a project engineer, which I am, to a sales engineer.
“I know I look sooo handsome, but I’m actually trying to think here…”
That’s when I stumbled across the application engineer position. And apparently this is somewhere that’s a bit of a go-between on sales and technical engineering, where it’s less face-to-face and more implementation and sustaining.
And that’s something that really interests me. Until I had awareness of that position, however, I didn’t really know or have any ideas of what kind of career change I could be seeking. This article here is to help you not limit your options and to push you forward in your growth.
Try A Different Group In Your Company
You may work in logistics, in maintenance, or maybe engineering. These are particular groups that fall under your overall organizational structure. If the position you’re working on right now isn’t quite doing it for you, whether that’s engineering, or document control, or management, to seek out growth in a different branch of that organization may be the path you need to go on.
I suggest keeping it internal first because a lot of companies are interested in seeing their people grow inside of the companies. However, don’t let this stop you from going to other industries or companies that have the same type of position, but just aren’t applied in the exact same way you’re doing now. The point here is to keep and use the skills you already have to do something that may guarantee a greater chance of growth for you.
Try A Different Industry
And there you go, you can try a different industry. If you’re currently in health and wellness, maybe you need to bounce over to consumer electronics, or maybe you need to bounce over to high level retail. Again, the point here is to use what you’ve already spent your life growing and getting better at in some place where you might be able to prove greater use for your skills. There’s plenty of growth in other industries, and until you seek those opportunities out, you just never know what’s available.
Try To See What Matches
There’s a really cool website out there that from what I can tell is government-funded or taxpayer-funded, and it’s MyNextMove.org. And they have a pretty high level self-assessment on there where you can put in your interest by answering a few questions, and at the end of it you’ll get a six part score of what you’re interested in professionally.
This score is then matched against a gigantic database of careers that are available, and it ranks them in order of the preferences you came up with by doing that test. It’s pretty neat to see what’s out there, what’s available, and what matches with you. You can also see what is a couple of levels higher than what you’re currently qualified for, and what’s a couple of levels lower than what you’re qualified for. It’s interesting to see where all this fits into your overall path of growth, and it’s a wonderful planning tool.
Get Major on Your Career Ideas
Hopefully these ideas for your next plan to change your career help you in your direction and guidance. Try a different group in your company, try a different industry, or just try to see what actually matches you with the MyNextMove.org test or the Jung test. Open up your options for growth, and start growing soon.