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MPAC October 2004

Workshop on Active Career Management

8 am – 4 pm , October 2, 2004

Held at Portland State University , Portland , Oregon

Presented by the Oregon Section of the IEEE and

IEEE-USA’s Professional Activities Committee for Engineers (PACE)

Jobs and employment are in a transition. What is common sense about work and employment is rapidly becoming obsolete. This workshop provided attendees information and techniques needed to proactively manage their career through these turbulent times.

A successful career shares several characteristics with successful projects. It needs to be managed, resources such as resumes and contacts must be available in a timely manner, and the environment must be continually monitored for changes and risks.

This workshop presented the basics of project management and how they can be successfully applied to increase your success at work and in activities in your personal life. A fresh perspective on the two essential tools of career management, resumes and a network of personal contacts, were discussed using real life examples. How to successfully navigate continually changing projects, employment needs and hiring practices were presented and how to capitalize on the opportunities produced by those changes were discussed.

T o view the presentations click on the links below. Speaker biographies follow the presentations.

Project Management, Tarek Lahdhiri, Ph.D., P.E.

Attendees will be introduced to the fundamentals of project management to help themselves and their groups accomplish their endeavors, whether at work, in IEEE, at home, or in the community. Participants will learn basic project management techniques, and most importantly, how to apply them in real life without excessive paperwork or overhead! The workshop will include templates and checklists to take away, and examples of how to apply project management techniques to engineering, IEEE, and personal projects.

Resumes Inside and Out, Don Hill

The perceived better and worse methods to write and present a resume to a prospective employer will be reviewed. We will discuss the views of headhunters, human resource folks, and this audience. You are encouraged to bring a resume for show and tell.

The Importance of Networking and Tapping into Your Network, Lee Stogner

You will be introduced to the importance of Networking with respect to personal and company relationships. The first steps towards building a Network will be presented. The "Art of Networking" will be demonstrated in several exercises where the meeting participants can practice the "Art of Networking".

Career Shift; dealing with rapid and progressive changes in the US work-place, Henry Gregor

Change is stressful, especially when it involves our job, our careers, they are our sources of livelihood. When our job goes away, or changes, we experience mega-stress! Our society functions around this thing called a job. You can’t get a 401k, or an IRA retirement account without a job, you can’t get a loan for a car, a house or whatever, plus a job usually provides you (and your family) with health insurance. Our social status is greatly affected by “what we do”

What do you do when you find yourself in this situation? To a great extent it is a function of where you are in life and your career. An EE with less than 5 years experience needs to be on a different tack than a 55 year old engineer with 30 years experience. The one-size-fits all outplacement, or career counseling, that we all have received is not enough, as EEs we need to think of our careers as if they are our businesses. We need to run them as our businesses, we shouldn’t let anyone else run them for us!

Career Defense in the Face of Globalization, Adeeb Hamzey

The talk traces the development of the outsourcing movement, and the growth in the movement of information technology work offshore. The trend started with call centers and business operations, but gradually, the skill level of work sent abroad has increased, to include software development and engineering design. While the trend has been accelerating, and is likely not reversible, ways are discussed that IEEE members can use to direct their own careers to minimize their vulnerability to being displaced by it. See article: Is Offshoring Hurting U.S. Engineers?

Career Transitions, Don Herres

Any working engineer today who does not face significant transitions in the workplace in the next five years is probably going to retire by then. The initial changes of the downsized/rightsized/re-engineered corporations have become a continuous process of evolution and turbulence. In many cases, engineers now must to initiate transitions to change the workloads and stresses of the new corporate world into a manageable structure. Without the traditional support structure, engineers must take charge of their careers when the only priorities seem to be this week's deadline and long term planning is more than one business quarter.

Speaker Biographies

Henry Gregor

Henry Gregor is Director of Business Development for a small semiconductor company (FOCUS Enhancements) working on leading edge Ultra Wide Band wireless (UWB) technology. Henry did his undergraduate work in EE at the Royal College of Science and technology and has a MSEE from Syracuse University . He also did graduate work at PSU towards an MBA. Henry has run a pro-bono career development program at Beaverton ’s Capital Career Center , for the last 3 years.

Adeeb Hamzey

Adeeb Hamzey, project engineer, fossil and Hydro engineering department, has twenty five years experience in the electric utility business. He has worked in T&D substation design, system operation, technical training, and fossil & hydro generation. At the Region 3 level, Adeeb served as PACE chair and public information chair. He served as chairman of the Career Maintenance and Development Committee of the IEEE-USA. He has been appointed as the Region 3 PACE Chairman for 2005-2006.

Don Herres

Don Herres is a design engineer with Marquardt Switches, Inc., a manufacturing company, and has past experience in plant and facilities engineering. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer in New York State . Don received the B.S.E.E. degree from The State University of New York at Buffalo and the M.S.E.E. from Syracuse University . Don holds three patents.

Don Hill

Don Hill presently works for the University of Kentucky 's Physical Plant Division as an Engineer Associate specializing in facility modifications and maintenance. Don is active at the section, area, region, and national level of IEEE and IEEE-USA. Currently Don is IEEE-USA Vice President for Professional Activities

Tarek Lahdhiri, Ph.D., P.E.

In 1998, Dr. Lahdhiri joined General Motors Corporation in Warren , Michigan , where he is currently holding the position of Lab Manager for the Vehicle Controls Systems-CAE in the GM Engineering Process and Math Strategy Division. He is currently in charge of the real-time synthesis, analysis, and simulation of vehicle control systems and subsystems. Dr. Lahdhiri is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Michigan . He is currently Region 4 PACE Chair, the Region 4 coordinator for the IEEE-USA Employment & Career Service Committee, a member of the IEEE Educational Activities-Best Practices Planning Committee, and the IEEE Student Advisor at the University of Windsor .

Lee Stogner

Lee Stogner is the Director of Systems Integration for Fluor in Greenville , South Carolina . He has a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Clemson University and a Masters of Engineering from the University of South Carolina . He is a past IEEE-USA Vice President for Professional Activities and a past President of the South Carolina Council of Engineering Societies. Lee is also a member of ISPE and is certified in Project Management by the Project Management Institute.