Importance of Awareness Among Engineers

As an engineer, most of the times we are thinking about building something new, improving something that's already there or sometimes even entirely changing the way something works. But there is something that each engineer wants to build and that is his/her career. Now as much as it is important to be talented and hardworking it is equally important to get opportunities to showcase or utilize your talent. Often we find ourselves among the best in former but lacking in the latter. And that's why many a talented engineer never fulfills his/her potential. So, how to get these big opportunities then?

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Well, awareness is key in today's world. In this age of internet and the world without boundaries, the opportunities are numerous, talent boundless only challenge is to give the correct talent appropriate opportunities. Believe me, few companies are doing their bit today to provide opportunities to anyone and everyone who is interested but the problem many a times lies with the student fraternity. The problem is lack of awareness. Most talented students are so busy in their routine coursework that they don't have the time (or sometimes even the interest) to seek out the big opportunities. There are hundreds of great competitions that get floated every day. Many of them with great challenges and lucrative prize money but we just don't know about them. Many of these are advertised, most of them here at CE itself, but frankly how many of us care to check them out.

The lack of awareness is not only about competitions and events, it spreads from career options to all the way to our social environment and politics. A good engineer can not become good in true sense till he/she doesn't contribute to the greater good of society. Who would use our bridges, buildings, technology and gadgetry if not the society? Can we really be unaware of our social environment and still be a good engineer? I for one, don't think so.

In the Indian context, there are some great institutions which offer great courses, some of them only for engineers but we just aren't informed enough. How many of us know of Fire engineering colleges in India? How many of us know NITIE (National Institute of Industrial Engineering) which is one of Centres of Excellence of the Government of India? How many of us know about Indian institute of forest management? Sadly very few. These are top quality Government institutions (NITIE accepts only first class engineers with a CAT percentile of more than 98.3 or Top GATE rankers for its courses in management) which are highly rated in the industry but we are not aware of them because they don't advertise.

The problem of awareness can be solved only through collaborative effort. CE is doing its bit by giving you a VoiCE. Are you doing your bit? Just think about it!