Question: What is the biggest mistake you have made during your career and how did you resolve it

Neil Taylor answered on 15 Mar 2015:

Hi!

Most professional engineers try to aspire to be “chartered” with an engineering institution – for example the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). Becoming chartered is a recognition of technical qualifications and certain professional “competencies”. These competencies include things like showing problem solving ability, showing that you can lead, showing that you can communicate effectively, and showing that you are contributing to society/the environment.

As part of becoming chartered, you need to write “quarterly reports”, which record your development for that quarter of the year.

I think the biggest mistake I made during my career was waiting over a year to write my first “quarterly report” for my professional chartership. This meant that I had a LOT of work to catch up on, which needed to be done in my own time!

I eventually resolved the problem by investing the time required to be up-to-date, but I learnt some important lessons about managing the time that I spend writing quarterly reports! 😀

Hope this helps!