International Engineers: Stop Talking About Yourself. Start Talking About the Work.

Tips for International Engineers

When I was a young engineer with about two years of experience, I learned something very important.

Whenever I was meeting companies about short-term contracting roles sometimes with large consulting firms I noticed something about how the conversations worked.

Most graduates talk about themselves.
Their qualifications.
Their experience.
Their resume.
But I rarely spoke about myself.

Instead, I was completely focused on the work they needed delivered.
I would ask questions like:

What exactly needs to be delivered on this project?
Where are you up to at the moment?
Are there any challenging stakeholders involved?
When would you like someone to start?
Very quickly the conversation would move away from who I was to what needed to get done.

And that’s the mindset companies are looking for.

Not someone focused on their past.

I learnt this Skill from doing contract work as an engineer on Hourly rates, delivering all sort of short term projects. So to keep a contract you need to make a great first impression day one week one, month one.

Deliver something quickly, I learnt to do this to make sure I always had work

Now here is another reality of engineering projects.

There will always be:
✅ good people
✅difficult people
✅ and sometimes very difficult people

That’s just the nature of projects.

✅ The best engineers don’t fight these realities.
✅ They manage them.
✅ Sometimes that means being patient.
✅ Sometimes that means being diplomatic.
✅ Sometimes it means simply finding a way to work with someone’s personality.
✅ You’re not there to change people.
✅You’re there to deliver the project.
✅ If someone is a bit challenging, the simplest strategy is often this:

Take the time to actually get to know them.

Find something you genuinely like about the person.
It might be:
a sport
a shared interest
a hobby
their experience in the industry

Once you find that connection, working together becomes much easier.

Because projects are rarely delivered by technical skills alone.

They are delivered by people who know how to work with other people.
Final thought
✅ Engineers who succeed in their careers don’t spend their energy fighting personalities.
✅ They focus on one thing:
✅ Delivering the work — no matter who is in the room.

That mindset alone will take you a long way.

Mark – Grad Coach
https://lnkd.in/gbVzm3mG