How to Build Credibility in the Engineering Industry
Skills alone are not enough, make sure to focus on the second part as well!
From Senior to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role (announcement)
I am happy to share that I will be launching an online cohort course called “From Senior to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role”. It’s going to be launched at the end of June / beginning of July.
The course will primarily be for Senior Software Engineers who wish to grow to the Lead role (Tech Lead (Staff), Team Lead, Engineering Manager).
I would be happy to welcome ambitious Software Engineers and I would be happy to welcome everyone in the lead role who wishes to thrive in the role as well!
I’ll share with you all of my experience both as an engineer who grew to the Team Lead role and beyond + as a manager who has promoted a lot of engineers to lead roles!
To help me to shape the course to be the best possible for you, I would appreciate a few minutes of your time to answer a couple of questions! Thank you 🙏
Let’s get back to this week’s thought.
Intro
We all know a certain person who seems to be resolving any problems very easily and whenever we think of them we think: “Now that’s a person who is doing very well”. Well, that’s credibility.
That person is good in their skillset, plus they have been able to inspire positive thoughts about them through the track record of successful actions.
Let’s define credibility more in detail next!
What exactly is credibility
The simplest way we can put it is that it’s a combination of your skills and how people perceive you.
You can focus on your skills, but if you neglect the second part, you won’t come across as a credible individual.
You can be the best in your craft, but it’s also important to showcase that through:
getting things done (taking ownership, responsibility and being reliable),
helping others and making others around you better,
social proof (what others are saying about you).
That’s how you come across as a very credible individual.
Good credibility is mandatory in order to grow to Lead roles
This is very important in our industry, especially for Senior+ roles. It’s especially hard to grow to leadership roles (Team Lead, Tech Lead (Staff), EM and beyond) without it. You need to make sure that you come across as a credible individual if you wish to grow to such roles.
Think of it this way: You start to become judged more by the actions of your team and less by your individual contribution. A person who is willing to promote you to the leadership role is placing a bet on you that you will make good decisions for the whole team and not only for yourself.
That’s where credibility comes into play. The person promoting wants to minimize the risk as much as possible by taking a look at past actions.
Were the projects they were leading successful? What do others say about them? Is the team going to listen to them? Are they reliable? Are they able to coach and mentor the team? Etc.
Even though I was quite indecisive about where I wished to grow in my career after the Senior role, credibility has helped me to grow to my first Team Lead role.
You can read my story on how I grew to the Team Lead role here: From IC to manager (paid article).
Others won’t listen to you if you don’t show credibility
Do you listen to the person that you know they don’t have enough credibility to talk about a certain topic? Well you should, because they may have some creative thoughts, but you won’t look at them as an expert in the field.
It’s really hard to have any kind of influence without credibility. You won’t be able to get your point across or share your ideas and execute them. People won’t be eager to listen to your thoughts or what may happen is that they won’t even include you in the decisions.
If you currently have such issues, well it’s time to re-think about how you can show yourself as a credible person and that you are a valuable person to the team. Don’t worry, I got you covered on this later on!
It’s also hard to manage up successfully without being credible in the eyes of your manager. You can read more about the importance of managing up and how to do that here: How to manage up as an engineer or a manager (paid article).
It’s becoming more and more important to build your credibility for any engineering role
Some time ago it was enough to finish a CS school or university and you could get a Software Engineering role easily without even showing a lot of your skillset. Well, these times have passed.
With the current market, the more credible you are, the faster you will be able to get a new role.
I know this may sound obvious, but I see a lot of people not acknowledging that and just sending out half-made CVs with some random words listed there and what’s worse - it’s hard to see and imagine what they can bring to the table without speaking to them first.
The best way to come across as a credible individual is with a good online presence where people can easily find your work and see what you can do + how you approach to things. This can be GitHub, a personal website, writing a blog or a newsletter, being active on LinkedIn, etc.
The current market is quite saturated, especially for jr. and mid-level roles. And the only way to stand out is to be more credible than others. You can do that with good planning and preparation to showcase your credibility.
You can read more on how to improve your chances in the current market here: Thriving in a competitive engineering market (paid article).
Let’s get into how to build credibility next.