Chemical Engineering Jobs: How to choose your career path

An engineering degree serves with various career paths, they can be non-engineering based too. However, opting for a career path in the core areas of your branch of engineering is an assured means to embrace success. When choosing a career path in your branch, lets say, chemical engineering, you need to be sure of what you like to do, whether you would want to work alone or in a team, and how competitive are you.

Talking about chemical engineering jobs, there is a broad range of expertise and domains to select, and tread your career path. The domains include research, development, process, project, sales, and marketing.

However, a career path in research and development demands higher level degree or a Ph.D. And then furthering, into innovation and research to bring in advancements in chemical engineering.

A marketing path in chemical engineering jobs might lead you to an MBA, as the work experience shall allow you to apply for executive MBA programs which you can pursue while being on the job. An MBA degree shall also serve you with prospects in project, operations, processes and sales.

However, a career path in development and process engineering demands extensive engineering acumen, whereas, project engineering is oriented towards the resources involved, budget, forecasting, scheduling and planning. Sales and marketing roles in chemical engineering jobs only demand an outlined knowledge of the domain with skills to nurture and develop customer relations.

The primary constituents of these career paths remain common, namely, extroversion, practicality, and competitiveness.

A management degree will not only give a boost to your career growth, however, will bring itself extra responsibilities, bigger challenges, and a higher earning potential.Moreover, if you are in two minds whether you would be suited for the management side of the business, rather than engineering, then look forward for an opportunity to, manage resources, assigning projects, reviewing work, grooming the juniors and imbibing in them a deep sense of discipline and work ethic. This would help you evaluate yourself, to know if you are a right cut out for the managerial side of the business.

Other than management side of chemical engineering jobs, technical roles are more bent towards discovery and synthesis of new substances, enabling new possibilities in the domain of science, medicine, technology, healthcare, and engineering.

The dependence of other domains of engineering on chemical engineering makes it possible for these tradesmen to pursue a career in any industry, where their skills are applicable. Steel manufacturing, power generation, oil and gas, automobile manufacture, food processing are some of the popular job domains, where chemical engineering jobs are equally challenging as any other domain and highly lucrative.

To sum it up, chemical engineering is the branch of engineering which makes impossible possible not only in its respective domain, but also makes it achievable for other domains of engineering to create products using materials that are long lasting and effective.

To decide a career path, seek the guidance of seasoned professionals or your seniors, as considering their experience you would be able to choose the best and reach to the top, only if you make mistakes and learn from them.