When one is asked a question, the first reaction is to jump immediately and authoritatively to “The Answer is X.”

However, a preferable response is to first consider whether it is the right question; that is to say, if you might serve the client better by rephrasing the question for them, and then answering that.

A question that often comes up from engineering students in Spring is, in various forms, something like “do you know of firms that have opportunities that I can apply to?”

It’s not a bad question, and fair enough, finding out what people know about firms in the industry is useful data collection. However, instead of providing a simple answer, it seems first one might want to ask the question “What are considerations in finding the right firm for me?”, so that one reviews the process for lining up one’s career following a useful trajectory.

Hopefully you are more to the right side of this (Wikimedia)

When one is looking for those initial positions, and perhaps looking a few steps beyond that, what are some considerations if one wants to work in, say, the renewable energy field?

Let’s discuss several basic characteristics of firms and after itemizing those, we can consider how they can serve you differently throughout your career:

  1. Firm Size
  2. Firm Role
  3. Job Intensity
  4. Vision Match

Firm Size

Let’s tabulate some of the relative merits primarily associated with the size of the company:

Large: think companies like GE, Siemens, AECOM, ENEL, Bechtel. The whale bracket.  International, tens of thousands of employees. Likelier to have well established corporate policies and training programs. Probably good benefit programs. Most importantly, likelier to have better established internal codes and standards for how to perform work.  Better potential for rotation programs if they serve multiple sectors. More potential for being pigeonholed or lost in the crowd, so advancement may be more difficult. Better fit for a ‘company man’.

Small: niche or startup companies – think Silicon Valley: boom or bust. Overtaxed staffs; everyone has to ‘do everything’. Better opportunities for advancement or motivations to develop new skill sets (business, marketing) to react to new challenges. Probably more exciting. Company growth is more visible. Fewer established corporate practices, formal training or rotation programs. More volatility in earnings/ greater potential for ownership. Project Developers would often fall into this category.  Everyone was small before they became medium or large. Better fit for an ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘maverick’.

Medium: basically a small company that has survived that initial infant mortality and has grown their fleet of assets to a score, or staff to hundreds. May need to undergo a transition in leadership/management to start to ‘think large’. Hopefully not a large company that’s slowly dissolving; might want to avoid those.

Firm Role

Here we consider what basic function the firm performs – and note that many firms can execute multiple roles.

Owner: the firm owns operating facilities like a power plant, refinery, manufacturing facility, etc. An engineer might get more exposure to plant operations and maintenance, performance tracking and rehabilitation of existing facilities. They might become an expert on their own facility rapidly, but not see those of competitors as often. Public utilities and independent power providers abound: consider owners with power generation portfolios like ENEL Green Power, Calpine, EDC (Philippines), Ormat, DONG Energy, PG&E (California), ICE (Costa Rica), LaGeo (El Salvador), Reykjavik Energy (Iceland), KenGen (Kenya), or CFE (Mexico). If one wants to include equipment vendors with manufacturing facilities, then there is an infinity of firms: big ones like ABB, Alstom, Mitsubishi, Siemens, SPX, Tesla, Toshiba, Vestas, Voith, etc.

Contractor: the companies that Owners engage to build their facilities. An engineer with a bent for construction management, steel-toed boots, per diem and dusty construction trailers might take well to a company like this. For a list of the top U.S. contractors, consult the Engineering News-Record list here: names like Bechtel, Fluor, Kiewit, Skanska are some of the bigs. Even if you aren’t working for one, it is useful to know the names and their specializations, as you may rub shoulders as clients, collaborators or competitors. Sometimes equipment manufacturers have a contracting arm in order to more effectively deploy their products.

Engineer: many Contractors have design capabilities in-house, but in many cases a Contractor that does not have such strengths will team up with a pure Engineering firm to provide the design. Alternatively, Engineers often serve as an advisor for an Owner or their Lenders throughout a project’s life. Engineering firms can also work on plant operating solutions (tuning plants for better performance or retrofitting), but are usually working with new designs, using the latest technology, on a constantly refreshed stream of new projects. A list of the top 500 U.S. design firms in 2016 can be found here. You’ll note that some large firms appear on both the Contractor and Design Firm lists.

Went to top 11 because the similarity of Parsons and Parsons-Brinckerhoff always confused me

Job Intensity

Consider here your appetite for long hours, frequent travel, getting in way over your head, learning a ton; versus steady hours, less challenging work and more time with the family. To a certain extent this is up to you; you certainly have the opportunity to drive yourself hard and excel in any setting, regardless of the external forces placing demands on you. There is not a right or wrong answer, but different institutions have different reputations for how hard you will be expected to work and the rigor of the assignments.

Vision Match

Finally among this list of four selected aspects is asking yourself what the vision of the company is, and whether it is a match for your personal preferences and ethical standards. No one can dictate to you what it should be, but it has to be a factor that is considered.

Putting it All Together Along the Arc

So let’s say that there are not other constraints such as family, geography, availability of open positions, salaries, etc. What might an optimal trajectory be?

Starting Out: the preference here would seem to be for a larger firm, where a new engineer could learn more of the ‘right way’ to do things. The new engineer might get better access to higher institutional standards, training programs, and cross-divisional training in a megafirm. Since we may lack field experience (who trusts a design if the person has never seen or worked with the item they are designing), working for a firm that combines several roles to get you hands-on experience might be advantageous. Ideally if you are single, healthy and adventurous you could choose very intense work environments. I’ve known (non-engineers) that worked for a consulting firm like McKinsey, which seemed like a good choice in their 20/early 30s: worked very hard, considered as one of the best, made good money, had an opportunity for international postings. Say YES to everything.

Middle Game: after you have 3-7 years of experience, you may want to avoid career stagnation, if your job happens to be working at the same facility, with the same people, with the same responsibilities. Perhaps it would be time to move on. As they say in the U.S.: “Everyone should live in New York, but leave before they get hard. Everyone should live in California, but leave before they get soft.” With a solid CV and some money in the bank you might be ready to roll the dice on a smaller company where you can have a larger role, get in on something exciting, try some novel approaches. Perhaps you want to try your hand at a medium size Engineering firm, where you can see a wide range of owner/contractor projects and technologies, learn more about cutting edge approaches be more creative with new designs. Perhaps you want to start your own venture – take a risk while you have some assets and time ahead of you to recover if it doesn’t work out perfectly.

Late Career: I’m a fan for going as hard as you can as long, if it expresses your values, but at some point if you have a family or other interests, you may need to find an appropriate balance when the money means less and less. You probably have more assets and a solid CV, so in the later stages you can be more selective about opportunities, although you may or may not have as much geographic flexibility as you did starting out out of college when everything fit in a pickup truck. At this point “if it’s not a HELL YES, then it’s a no.” Something middle to large probably makes sense, but then again you may be an owner of a small firm yourself.  Your back will probably get stiff if you are expected to travel too much; stay in shape.

Summary

There is of course not a perfect trajectory; everyone has different preferences and constraints. My trajectory was large/owner, medium/engineer, small/academic, medium/engineer. It worked out well, though I was a bit envious watching other friends who tried the small startup or developer routes midcareer, even if they didn’t wind up rich. In searching for your first positions though, consider your own motivations, and if you can articulate to someone hiring why you feel the nature of their firm and you would be a good fit (perhaps using some of these categories) , that might be advantageous in your interviews.

If you feel you have a preference for a particular sector, start reading early in engineering or technology newsfeeds, blogs, or professional organizations. Get a feel for the players in your target sector and region – perhaps you can use ENR as a cross reference. Start collecting intelligence far before you need a position, and be familiar with what sort of postings might pop up periodically. Network of course through whatever means – your colleagues, conferences or other trade gatherings. And finally, if you think a company and you would be a great fit, it’s not unheard of to get a job at someplace that doesn’t have a position advertised (or if their postings are not a perfect fit for you). If a good company sees talent, and you can get a hearing somehow, they may give you a shot regardless.

It’s fun to look for positions, even when one has a job. If you see something promising, it’s encouraging to know you have a lot of options. If you see jobs that look terrible, well, then you can be thankful if you have something better. Be positive, authentic and patient and something always arises eventually.