Michael A. Rynearson, P.E.
Project Engineer
Utility Engineering Corporation

Q: When you first started your career - what was the biggest lesson learned on the job?

A: Communication is so vital. This includes both listening/understanding, as well as speaking, presenting, writing e-mails, reports, and memos. Not only can communicating effectively avoid misunderstandings throughout a project, but also if you can express yourself in an intelligent and succinct manner, you can really establish the confidence of others in your abilities.

Q: What is the underlying foundation for career success today?

A: Getting involved, being proactive, searching for responsibility and the type of work you want to do is vital to career success. This approach has helped me find tasks that I enjoy and get my name recognized as a positive contributor. I firmly believe if your going to belong to an organization, whether it is a company, or an organization such as ASME, you need to get involved. It doesn’t work to be that person that just shows up, and isn’t really a part of the organization.

Q: How do you keep up-to-date within your industry?

A: I belong to the combined cycle committee within the Power Division of ASME, and the Energy Committee, I help peer review ASME industry papers for publication, I attend the ASME Power Conference annually, and I subscribe to trade magazines such as energytech, Power, and Power Engineering.

Q: What advice would you give a recent engineering graduate looking for work?

A: Learn to use industry software modeling packages. It has been my experience that the graduates that stand out for entry-level positions and receive interviews when we scan through resumes are the candidates with certain keywords on their resume. In the power industry some of these keywords are the modeling packages such as Caesar, Gatecycle, GT Pro, Fluent, etc…

Q: Has your involvement in ASME changed or influenced your career path?

A: ASME has helped me stay up to date on technologies and issues within my industry. But most significantly, because of my involvement with ASME, I have become my company’s main contact for ASME. This has helped get my name recognized by my immediate manager as well as corporate management.

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