Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an engineering assistant and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An engineering assistant assists in the department of engineers offering various support services. The responsibilities of the assistant can differ based on the specifications and the scope of the project.
Duties that engineering assistants carry out includes developing project schedules and spreadsheets for tracking the projects. The assistants can work on a wide range of engineering projects from urban infrastructure to a landscape. They may also be involved in the drawing of designs to be used by the engineers using specific tools, write and update technical documentation as well as managing databases. Lastly, they are also responsible for the management of various program files.
Core Skills Required to be an Engineering Assistant
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
An engineering assistant should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Listening Skills:
Listening Skills are a practical ability to accurately receive and interpret messages you receive during the communication process to ensure flow and accuracy are maintained.
An Engineering Assistant ought to have outstanding listening skills that lead to a better understanding at the workplace between the management and the staff, customer satisfaction in return yielding greater productivity with fewer mistakes and increased sharing of information in a more creative and innovative way.
Collaborating with others:
Collaborating is willingly working with one another and cooperating in whatever task one is assigned without behaving poorly or having an attitude change that hurts others.
An Engineering Assistant is meant to collaborate with all workers and management both male and female without causing frustrations or sidelining any worker or delaying their promotion from any informal conversations where most decisions are often made.
Facilitation:
Facilitation is making tasks or life easy for others while ensuring the daily running of successful meetings or workshops or business at large.
An Engineering Assistant must use facilitation to process and structure a system that meets the needs of either an individual or a team to help them achieve their goals as well as add value to their lives by making sure each participates.
Networking:
Networking is the process that encourages an exchange of information and ideas among individuals or groups that share the same interests.
An Engineering Assistant is required to establish policies and procedures that govern networking to form professional relationships that will boost the future of business and employment prospects while maintaining regular contact with each other to gain each other's trust thus developing few quality relationships.
Equal Opportunity and Diversity:
Equal Opportunity and Diversity means having employees from a wide range of background that includes different ages, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious belief, educational background, physical ability and treating them equally.
An Engineering Assistant is required by the law to create a workplace free from discrimination and harassment to its employees as well as understand and adhere to the rights and responsibilities under the human rights and antidiscrimination law.
Personal Growth:
Personal Growth is the improvement of one's awareness, identity, developing talents and potential to facilitate the growth of oneself and the position they handle at the workplace.
An Engineering Assistant ought to assist his employees in finding themselves by introducing or referring them to methods, programs, tools, techniques and assessment systems that support their development at the individual level in the organization.
Role Awareness:
Role Awareness is the ability to be informed of your role in a given environment as well as understand the expectations placed on a position and to see how they are met apparently.
An Engineering Assistant must assess, measure and quantify his employee's awareness of their roles to see if they are transparent about what is required of each of them and review what kind of results they are delivering from their understanding.
Managing Details:
Managing Details is the skill of paying close attention to details of every element of your job performance to ensure nothing is overlooked.
An Engineering Assistant should be keen to handle every detail using strategic planning and organizational techniques that make it easy to keep track of everything that is happening in the organization consistently desiring to improve their knowledge and skills.
Business Trend Awareness:
Business Trend Awareness is the capacity to be conscious of the changing ways in which the companies are developing in the marketplace.
An Engineering Assistant should have the required knowledge of new business trends that he can instigate or follow and the understanding of how they are impacting the business decisions which will eventually bring success to the employees as well as the enterprise
Technology Trend Awareness:
Technology Trend Awareness is staying updated with the useful upcoming trends that can serve your business better and easier.
An Engineering Assistant must be able to look back at the setbacks and success of the company and consider new possibilities for the future by the use of technology looking for a better, faster, more practical approach that can make business more productive.
Hard Skills Required to be an Engineering Assistant
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
An engineering assistant should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.