• Question: is their any important skills required to be an engineer?

    Asked by 967cdge44 to Conor, Frederik, Ilaria, Jeffrey, Sarah on 2 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by stannes17.
    • Photo: Frederik Gossen

      Frederik Gossen answered on 2 Mar 2016:

      I guess you need to enjoy building things. You need to accept that sometimes things do not work out the way you want them to. And you should have some relation to maths, physics, etc.. If you like those subjects then engineering is probably a good choice for you.

      Do not worry about math too much, though. It is not as difficult as you might imagine.

    • Photo: Ilaria Cinelli

      Ilaria Cinelli answered on 2 Mar 2016:

      Observation and understanding of nature. Before build/project something, you should be able to full understand the dynamics in nature of a heart beating or a flight o birds, for example, and then describe it with formulas and physics.

    • Photo: Jeffrey Roe

      Jeffrey Roe answered on 2 Mar 2016:

      The best skill to have as an engineer is the ability to learn new things. In the tech area things move fast. The things I learned in college has became out of date within a few short years. While studying to become an engineer you will learn how to learn things quickly.
      So it means when I am asked to do something I have no knowledge in , I say yes and just learn how to do it.

    • Photo: Sarah Doran

      Sarah Doran answered on 2 Mar 2016:

      Yeah! Problem solving skills are very important. I always loved solving puzzles. You need to be a team player so good communication is vital (you can spend months building the coolest things but if they are not what the customer wanted its no good!). You need to have good attention to detail as well.

    • Photo: Conor McGinn

      Conor McGinn answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      Engineering is so broad – I dont think there are any technical skills that are universal. What might be important for one engineer might be useless for another. I think personal traits are the most important therefore as they are universal. The best engineers I know:
      1) Love what they do – life is too short not to do what you enjoy.
      2) Work really hard – not difficult if you meet trait #1
      3) Are persistent and can deal with failure – I feel that a background in sport is really helpful here

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