Keys to Making an Impact in Your Career

There are a variety of different skills or characteristics that allow engineers to be successful in their places of work. Using research conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), Engineering Career Services has compiled eight career keys to highlight ways that students can be impactful in their internships, co-ops, or career opportunities.

What are the Career Keys?

Individuals should strive to possess critical thinking, communication, and teamwork skills. They should be leaders who are self-aware and professional in the workplace. These individuals should work to promote diversity and inclusion by considering and respecting others. Lastly, they will utilize technology ethically and efficiently to solve problems. Engineers who possess these keys will be successful in their roles and careers.

Your fellow Buckeyes are displaying these career keys every day! Each year, Engineering Career Services reaches out to employers, giving them the opportunity to nominate students who made an impact on their organization in their co-op or internship experiences. Our 2020 Student Impact Awardees: Erik Anderson, Noah Kuemerle, and Maria Belicak have demonstrated these eight career keys in their internships and co-ops, and left a lasting impression on the companies they worked with.

Erik Anderson spent the Summer and Autumn of 2019 with Siemens working on the development of their next generation SPECT-CT camera platform. In his nomination for the award, Erik’s supervisor highlighted the ways that he contributed to the success of the project. He often acted as a leader in his role, and he “took the initiative where he saw a need to help the project proceed”. His work and contributions to his team allowed for their success. Erik’s supervisor also said that he “displayed a maturity and professionalism beyond his years” and “worked diligently to overcome obstacles, and always maintained a can-do attitude”.

As a factory design intern, Noah Kuemerle spent the Spring and Summer of 2019 with Tesla. When speaking about his time as an intern, Noah told ECS that “critical thinking, teamwork, and diversity” were essential in his experience. He described how he was tasked with “designing a portion of the Shanghai Gigafactory” and that he had to use critical thinking in his understanding of “the fundamentals of everything that went into it - every section of the manufacturing lines, the building structures, all the raw materials, and so much more”. Noah also highlighted how working with diverse teams was crucial to their success, as “one of the best ways to adapt constraints and widen your solution set is to utilize diverse teams”.

In her Environmental Co-op role, Maria Belicak spent the Fall of 2019 with Marathon Petroleum Company, providing support to the Marathon Pipe Line (MPL) Environmental Department. Maria demonstrated many career keys throughout her time in this position, such as critical thinking and utilizing technology to solve problems. For example, her supervisor explained in her nomination that “the data Maria collected and organized allowed her to develop multiple proposals” that provided for important goals to be met. Maria left a lasting impression with her department and the organization, and her supervisor said that “MPL was very impressed with Maria’s ability to come into a new environment, hit the ground running, and instantly provide value to the organization”.

Each of these students demonstrated the career keys in different ways to contribute to their success. Check out more information on the 2020 Student Impact Awardees, as well as a full list of the nominees.

"Wisdom equals knowledge plus courage. You have to not only know what to do and when to do it, but you have to also be brave enough to follow through." -Jarod Kintz