The past weekend I traveled internationally to work with colleagues on another continent. I’m a lucky volunteering member of IEEE, and so I reached out to the community before I jumped on my flight.
Turns out I have friends in this city, and so I spent a whole afternoon learning about the city and the eventualities it brings along.
Both my old friend and me agreed throughout our conversation that networking is an important activity, and having built an extensive network is an enormous asset.
While IEEE is only one opportunity to meet people, it is a solid recommendation for engineers to actually pick up this activity in first place, even though it may not seem obvious at the beginning of the individual career. Working with and knowing many people is all too often underestimated and need strong soft skills. But even those can be trained, just like engineering can be tought.