• Question: What is a skill you use and you have learnt during your job?

    Asked by 725fdfe49 to Tom, Ross, Blanca, Abi Aspen on 8 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Blanca Mendizabal

      Blanca Mendizabal answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      One of the skills that I’m using the most is attention to detail. Analysing data and creating documentation requires a high amount of attention. I also improved my project management skills to be able to deliver a product or service on time and on budget.

    • Photo: Tom Bullock

      Tom Bullock answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      I’ve learnt as many ‘soft skills’ as technical skills. For example, how to work closely with lots of different types of people, from different countries, cultures and religions. It important to respect each other’s difference to work well together.
      I never understood statistics or the relevance of maths as school, but everyday in my job I use maths and statistics and it has become easier and fun. I have a spreadsheet with over 1000 rows and 30 columns with data in it and I need to produce some graphs that show how our popcorn process is doing!

    • Photo: Ross Miller

      Ross Miller answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      How to communicate. Often an engineer’s work can be very technical with lots of formula’s, reasoning and assumptions. When you talk to someone who’s not an engineer, it can be quite tricky to talk about your work in a quick, clear and concise way.

      A large part of this is judging your audience too. Someone on your team may want to know exactly how you made a simulation whereas someone on another team might only want to know how it helps the business.

    • Photo: Abi Aspen Glencross

      Abi Aspen Glencross answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Is how not to kill your cells a skill? That was a big learning curve!

      In all honesty so much. Cell culture, writing a scientific research proposal, public speaking, so so much about muscle and it’s role in the body.

      The biggest thing? Question everything. To understand why things happen helps us create new experiments, new products and evolve. A PhD is a constant search and intake of knowledge with the aim of discovering something new!

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