Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an engineering technician and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An engineering technician has training and education of engineering but works under the supervision of a professional engineer. They work in a broad range of fields including manufacturing, industrial, construction, and laboratory among others.
He/she has other responsibilities including working together with professional engineers in the research and development to inform new projects. They assist in improving processes and designs. Besides, they work as quality assurance supervisors in science-related projects. They are also involved in solving technical problems specific to different engineering projects. Lastly, some may be included in the development of concepts and prototypes for new products in manufacturing industries.
Core Skills Required to be an Engineering Technician
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 technician 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 Technician 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 Technician 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 Technician 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.
Dealing with Difficult People:
Dealing with Difficult People is learning how to tactfully calm down an obnoxious person who is either verbally attacking you or stealthily criticizing you or your professional contribution.
An Engineering Technician must learn how to combat and tone the demanding customers or staff who are competing for power, privilege or spotlight which defy logic not with fights but with the truth and more listening skills as well as lots of patience.
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 Technician 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.
Potential for Advancement:
The potential for Advancement is the ability to make something better by being more skillful, more efficient, and more useful to produce high-quality results.
An Engineering Technician needs to invest in his employees by creating room for individual advancement that encourages stronger job performance because it positions the employees to demonstrate just how well they can perform their jobs through motivation and feedback that are critical to the employee performance.
Personal Drive:
Personal Drive is a combination of desire and energy in its simplest form directed at achieving a goal in whatever you have set your heart to accomplish.
An Engineering Technician needs to creatively design ways that drive the staff to carry out their work without wasting time by helping them understand and develop their self-motivation skills that assist them to take control of many different viewpoints of their life.
Seeing Potential Problems:
Seeing Potential Problems is the ability to structure the current situations and identify developments that could cause problems in the future.
An Engineering Technician needs to see potential problems before they occur and work to stop them early enough, he also has to stay ahead of the flow not to be caught you by upcoming issues that could be easily prevented if they were noted soon enough.
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 Technician 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.
Technology Trend Awareness:
Technology Trend Awareness is staying updated with the useful upcoming trends that can serve your business better and easier.
An Engineering Technician 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 Technician
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 technician should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.