Comparison of Career Success Competencies and Engineering Leadership Capabilities

Abstract

Societal expectations of twenty-first century engineers have dramatically changed over the past few decades. There is a need to educate engineers not just in technical subjects, but also in many non-technical areas including globalization, communication, and leadership. There has been a growth of engineering leadership education programs offered by postsecondary engineering institutions. The effectiveness of these programs is often measured by the student’s acquisition of skills, without considering the benefit of these skills on the students’ careers. Using the career success competencies model, this paper seeks to determine if engineering leadership education impacts career success. The analysis showed a high amount of correlation with engineering leadership capabilities, indicating a positive relationship between engineering leadership education and career success. The most significant competencies related to an engineer’s career success were career insight, proactive personality, openness to experience, and lifelong learning