Job market beckons budding engineers

Black Collegian, Oct 1999 by Greene, Marvin V

You're a budding engineer, soon to graduate or a recent graduate charting your path. If you go to Dr. Mae C. Jemison or Arthur E. Johnson, you're likely to get some straight forward career advice. As two engineers with significant career accomplishments, Jemison and Johnson will tell that your future success depends on one person - you.

Jemison, whose undergraduate degree is chemical engineering from Stanford University, was the first woman of color to fly into space in 1992 aboard Endeavour. Johnson, a software engineering major as an undergraduate at Morehouse College, runs a division of one of the world's most important companies.

In engineering today, you already know demand far outstrips supply, so the degree will get you the job. But simply having an engineering degree won't get you selected as an astronaut for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as Jemison was. And it won't land you as president and chief operating officer at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Information & Services Sector, as Johnson is.

While the career paths for engineers are boundless, Jemison and Johnson will tell you that you still must position yourself to go for it.

There is no road map or easy answers in the career game, said Jemison, who also earned a doctorate in medicine from Cornell University Medical College and today runs the Houston-based Jemison Group Inc., an advanced technology company, and serves as the national science literacy advocate for Bayer Corp. The way to advance your career in engineering and technical fields is "to put yourself up front" and not fear rejection, she said. That means attending career fairs and meeting people and their companies. And it means selling yourself and communicating effectively, she said.

"So many times people think there's a nice road map. There's isn't. I would love to say that NASA came and found me and that I was really wonderful and they heard how great I was," Jemison said. "I called down to Johnson Space Center, risked being called an idiot and asked is there an astronaut selection program. A lot of times it's much more simple than we imagine, but there's no single road map."

Often, graduates will hold back seeking opportunities, thinking they need someone else's permission first, Jemison added. "It's not like that," she said. "You have to design and decide where you want to go and project yourself there and be willing to be turned down."

When he left Morehouse, Arthur Johnson took a job with IBM's Federal Systems Division as a programmer trainee, then moved progressively up the IBM advancement ladder. Working in a number of technical, software systems and business management positions, Johnson ascended to the post of president and chief operating officer of IBM Federal Systems leading to his current position in the Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin organization. During his career, Johnson has served as executive assistant to IBM's chairman and graduated from the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies Seminar XXI Program.

Coming out as an undergraduate engineer, Johnson said he had no schematic of where his career was heading, just that it involved computer engineering. "It wasn't any grand vision or anything like that. I was a guy coming out of college looking for ajob, quite frankly," he said. "I had developed an interest in solving problems, in the sense of things that intrigued me. It was really more of an inquisitiveness on my part, liking to look at complex things and figuring them out."

Change and innovation are synonymous with engineering professions, Johnson said, and those who succeed will be on the upside of that. "For people who want to be successful, for people who are looking to get ahead and make a contribution, there is an element of flexibility, adaptability that you must have," Johnson said. "You have to be flexible in terms of your expectations and flexible in terms of your willingness to take on new and challenging things."

For the engineering graduate or recent graduate, these are the best of times. Amid a robust United States and worldwide economy, engineers have never been more in demand. Salaries and benefits are increasing, and so is the control the engineer has over his or her career.

A study from the American Electronics Association (AEA) found that the number of U.S. students earning associate's, bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics and physics actually declined by 5 percent between 1990 and 1996, despite growing demand for workers in these fields. For instance, the study found that the unemployment rate for electrical engineers is 2.1 percent and only 1.3 percent for computer engineers.

"The opportunities when engineering students get out of college are there to the point where they can do almost anything they want to do," observed Dr. James H. Johnson Jr., a civil engineer and dean of the College of Engineering,Architecture and Computer Sciences at Howard University in Washington, D.C.