There are engineers who work in their respective fields but eventually changes their line of profession in a similar one. Like an electrical engineer who later worked as an electronics engineer, or a chemical engineer who eventually gained experience in the biomedical engineering field, to name a few.
And most employers do not really mind this shifting of careers by engineers. When they see that the candidates have skills related to their company specialization, they consider those engineers in hiring. They know that engineers can bring value regardless of past work experience.
That’s because many engineering skills are transferrable between industries. Engineering problem solving process, analytical approach, and project management are fundamental abilities innate to all engineers. It is no surprise that there are engineers who find themselves working in a variety of engineering industries, even if they are not related at all.
Of course there will be new things to learn, and these are mostly the new field’s tricks and rules of thumb. When engineers are open to new knowledge, this is not a hard adjustment to do.
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Considering that you, as an engineer, can work in other related fields, what should you do to highlight your transferable skills and attract employers? Here are tips:
Create a skills inventory
To convince your next employer that you belong to other engineering fields, you need to list all skills which are being used in your present job which are transferable. It could be any technical skill, like performing advanced calculations or materials testing, among others.
Find the industries you like to work in
Of course you have to determine the engineering field that you want to be involved with next. Choose the sector which has a demand for your strengths and technical skills as you have listed.
Adapt your resume
What your next employer wants to see in your resume is that the job title is still relevant to your next engineering job. Other professional materials should also be listed that could be related to your chosen industry.
Work with a recruiter
It helps that you have a facilitator with you when crossing engineering fields. His or her function is to disassemble your work experience into skills and repackage them to match what employers look for.
Source: LinkedIn
