• Question: How important is understanding business to being successful as an engineer?

    Asked by Mia on 13 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      It plays a role on par with the technical and soft skills you’ll need.

      You are not expected to know all ins and outs of a business you are applying for from the start, but every place I checked has a requirement to be “passionate about the business/industry”. This usually translates into you knowing about the largest, broad problems in the area (you can pick these up from the news about the industry you want to apply for).

      As a school or uni graduate, the more you know about the company you apply for, and the kind of engineer you want to be, the better your prospects are. This includes some knowledge about their business. You can pick up particular company’s news from their blogs or press releases. You’d be amazed how much you can learn from spending just a few minutes browsing the company’s press release statements 🙂

      The further up the career ladder you are, the more you are expected to know about what goes on in your business, and how businesses operate in general. It pays (literally) to know what your competition is doing as well, since you may find new opportunities/jobs in other companies, as you learn more about them.

      Robotics, for example, is quite a tightly-knit group in the UK. There are only a handful of companies in every major branch (e.g. industrial automation, home robotics, oil drilling, military), so knowing what those do will improve your chances of success vastly.

      I hope this helps 🙂 Feel free to ask more – you’ve touched on a very pertinent issue 🙂

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