Soft Skills For Reliability Engineers

The Hard Part is often Soft Skills

There are many paths to becoming a reliability engineer.

If you are good with statistics, enjoy the detective work of failure analysis, or simply want to create a durable long lasting product, you likely found yourself in a reliability engineering role.

A science or engineering background is a great start. Time spent working with a design or maintenance team certainly help. An advanced degree in reliability engineering is another path.

The element that is often missing as a precursor become starting a career in reliability is excellent soft skills. We know the engineering and science stuff. The formulas, the testing, the data analysis. We can get stuff done in the lab or on the shop floor.

Yet to become an exceptional reliability engineer, or any type of engineer, add the ability to communicate well. Add the ability to get your point across and to wield influence to help others understand and accept your proposals, ideas, and results.

I’ve written about the hard skills side often and mentioned the need to improve your ability to influence. Now I want to focus on improving your ability to communicate (the heart of influence) in this column.

The Difference Between Hard and Soft Skills

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