Controls design engineer skills for your resume and career

Engineers are constantly working with a variety of people on a project. These people could be other engineers in the same department or other departments, managers, stakeholders, and customers. The ability to communicate both on a technical and non-technical level with these people is likely the most important soft skill for a design engineer.

Designing, prototyping, testing, and iterating are likely the most important skills for a design engineer. This is what we strive to teach at Murray State in our Design Engineering Technology program. Many sub-skills would fall into these categories, such as CAD, design for manufacturing, 3D printing, and destructive/non-destructive testing.

It again depends on what the graduate sees as their next step - graduate school or a job with a company or lab. If the next step is graduate school, the graduate should investigate what they are interested in pursuing and then where the best school is to get the experience that the graduate thinks he or she wants.

General reading about technologies or reading available articles about subjects the graduate is interested in will help generate questions they can ask potential graduate schools. This time would also be a chance to improve areas where the graduate may feel weak while an undergraduate. Many online resources can help them brush up on week background topics. Do not worry about transfer credits because that is usually not helpful in graduate school, but improve knowledge and experience in areas where the graduate feels weak. If the graduate has identified a graduate school and program to study in, the graduate school might have some recommendations about what to review. All of this will help improve success in graduate school.

If the next step is a job with a company or lab, taking courses to improve communication will help. Many technically competent or even technically brilliant people struggle with effective communication. Techniques about writing reports, making oral presentations, or communicating technical information will help improve success. The gap year also provides time to investigate technologies that the graduate wants to be involved in and the companies or labs in those areas.

Once the graduate has identified areas of interest and companies or labs that the graduate might want to work for, they can be contacted to either answer questions or point the graduate in a direction for further investigation.

In either case, a gap year can provide a chance to refine the graduate's choice for the next steps and help them prepare other skills overlooked during the undergraduate years.

While our universities consistently educate engineering students with hard skills and strong engineering fundamentals, tomorrow's engineers need to be strong communicators, collaborators, and critical thinkers. Our professional environments are filled with data and information, and the constraint is typically how much time individuals can dedicate to solving a problem. At Elon University, we educate tomorrow's engineers to have the hard skills necessary to analyze the information and situations, apply critical thinking techniques to determine ways to solve the issue, and then concisely and efficiently communicate with colleagues as solutions are being set in motion.