ETM 500 İletişim
Presentation of Ertuğrul Koç

Yiğit Ömer Altıntaş
2013712330

Communication and Writing Skills

For many years, in the masses of people there has been made a stereotype of the working engineer. This is a person who spends ten hours straight in front of his computer, making some strange graphs and calculations. He is afraid of sunlight and spends his free time inventing the time machine. When people try to start a conversation he says that he has a lot of work to do and tries to run away as fast as possible. This picture may be a little exaggerated, but it is how media and television draw it. But today, engineers need communication and writing skills even more than actual engineering.

Any engineering career starts from the resume writing. Usually a resume consists of two parts: the list of things that you have done well in your life and the cover letter. Dr. Craig Gunn, a professor of mechanical engineering, clearly explains, “Many big companies do not require the cover letter, but it will be much better for you to write one, because if a manager will read it for some reason, your chances to get a job will be a lot higher.” A person that is going to give you a job will not see you directly, so you have to convince him or her not to throw your resume in the basket by presenting all of your best qualities in the resume. To write a good convincing resume is a very difficult thing to accomplish without some preparations. A good thing will be to go to a library and read a special book about resume writing. Also, the Internet is full of websites like http://www.7step-resumesampler.com/ that have a lot of important information about this subject.

A cover letter plays an important role in getting a job too. In your cover letter, as dr. Gunn suggests, “use all your writing abilities to convince the manager of your exceptional importance for this job, and you will be accepted.” Smooth and grammar free cover letter increases chances to get a job very much.

Communication is also a very important part of the work of any engineer. As Dr. Gunn states, “there is only twenty percent of actual engineering and eighty percent of writing and communication between co-workers and superiors.” Employers, as Paul Osterman points out in his essay “Getting Started”, “are not simply looking for technical skills. The workplace of the 1990s, . . . , requires people who are able to work cooperatively with others.” Nowadays, the employers don’t look for engineering nerds who will spend all work time in the office with an engineering calculator. Even if you are the greatest engineer nobody will recognize you if you cannot explain to others your thoughts and ideas.

The first rule for all engineers is to put all of their thoughts on paper, so they will not forget anything. Notes and different memos are as important as the giant research papers. If you are in a restaurant or riding a car you do not have an option to write in an appropriate manner, so any piece of paper will be good enough to record your ideas. The main problem is to understand in the future what you have written there. In the future, this piece of paper can be the starter of your new project. Putting the notes on the paper helps to free the brain form memorizing and gives space for thinking about new ideas. Making notes is the first and the smallest part of the required writing in mechanical engineering, but it is as important as others.

Reports probably take only seventy five percent of all writing time of an engineer, and are the most widely used tools for job promotion. There is a big misunderstanding that reports are the papers with lots of hard and special terms that only the most experienced engineers can understand. In most cases, however, reports are written for those who do not have much to do with engineering and the goal of an engineer is to explain his ideas clearly enough so that the person who will read it will have an understanding of what the engineer has written there. Primarily, that is the reason why employers want people with good writing skills.

The integration of Internet and hi-tech technologies in our life has had a big impact on engineering too. Now the distance between the workers is not an insuperable barrier any more. Many engineers working on one big project are connected to a single database; this is not a dream any more. E-mail letters are the most widely used electronic communication devices right now. During the conversation with Dr. Gunn it became clear that while the important documents are sent by fax or mail, electronic mail is important only for informal letters to collaborators. The situation is much different in communication with superiors. As Dr. Gunn remarks, “the way to write to your work mates is free – you can use any style as you wish but the message to your boss should be made accurately and especially without any mistakes!” The reason is that managers want to employ literate and accurate people who can do important and precise work, and the grammar mistakes show them the opposite.

Each good engineer has to do a research project. This is the time when you have to use all your writing skills to succeed. Sometimes it is necessary to spend years and years of preparations and search for information before the final draft. Over this period, the ability to summarize and make a conclusion are the main skills required. Dr. Gunn explains that the research paper is important because, “ the employers want to see that the money that they have invested in you have not been spent without any benefit . . .” To produce successful research, the combination of engineering, writing and communications skills are also required.

All these skills are required if you work in a giant corporation. But if you go to a private business or into higher administrative circles the situation can be very different. In fact, there is some tendency now that the higher you get, the less engineering you have to do and the more and more communication and writing skills are required. When you open a private engineering company, you have to deal with government agencies. In the end of our conversation Dr. Gunn points out, “Permissions, contracts, licenses will be everyday routine for those who got into the private engineering business.” Private engineering businesses have to deal with tremendous amounts of the paper work where advanced engineering skills are required.

Engineering is a very broad profession that envelops many other sciences and specialties. Engineers cannot spend a lot of time behind the closed office door. They have to communicate and share ideas and thoughts with other collaborators and authorities. Sometimes, they don’t even need engineering as much as communication and writing skills in order to be promoted to a better job.

Works Cited

Paul Osterman. “Getting Started” Write for College. Patric Sebranek, Verne Meyer and Dave Kemper. Wilmington, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, 491-96