Tiger Buford, an orthopedic recruiter with 30 years in product development, gives 16 pieces of career advice for engineers in the field. He stresses surgeon interaction, building a public portfolio, attending surgeries, limiting CAD time, and networking over an MBA. Early-career startup roles and prioritizing experience over salary matter more than you think.
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Brought to you by Tiger Buford. Hello, orthopedic friends. Welcome to Inside Orthopedics. My name is Tiger. I'm an orthopedic industry insider and retained recruiter for early-stage orthopedic companies. Thanks for listening. This is episode number 23, titled Real Career Advice for Engineers Working in Orthopedics. This one is for the those young engineers who are working in the field right now. You may be at year two, year ten, whatever. I'm about to share some real life advice for you to accelerate your career in our industry. Nobody else is going to tell you this stuff, and I wish I'd known this stuff when I was starting out in orthopedics. Let's jump right in. So I'm an engineer with gray hair. I have worked in product development at 6 different orthopedic companies over 3 decades. I've worked with hundreds of talented engineers, and I have witnessed poor career moves that have stuck engineers into stagnant areas for decades, just grinding it out in a cubicle. I've also seen brilliant career moves by engineers who've rocketed their careers within a few short years. So based on this experience, I'm going to give you 16 specific pieces of advice for engineers who are ambitious and want rapid career progression. This advice assumes you already have the right degrees and you're, you're competent and you're working inside an orthopedics company today. All right, here we go. Number 1, find a mentor. So the engineers who move up quickly in an organization have an informal sponsor in upper management who looks after them and shares their accomplishments in closed-door executive meetings. and hooks them up for opportunities not available to the other faceless engineers in the organization. I've seen this. Ask an executive inside or outside the company to be your mentor and have coffee with you once a month. It works, believe me. He or she will be flattered and they will say yes. Number 2, Get closer to the customer. Bottom line, the engineers who have more interaction with surgeons make more money and move up quicker. That's just a fact. Get closer to the customer. Number 3, learn how to manage other engineers. It's not easy going from a single contributor with the engineer title to managing at least one person, the engineering manager title or supervisor. In order to jump this chasm, you have to have some informal management experience, so find a way to get it. The engineers who have mentored other engineers on projects, even if they cannot say they've managed other engineers on a project, are the ones that get the nod for the open engineering management position. All right, learn how to manage others. Number 4, learn how to delegate time-consuming detail work to others. Engineers who are on the fast track get more work done each week than their peers. Many fast-track engineers persuade others into helping them. They ask, for instance, please review this design, review this test plan, go to this meeting for me, talk to this vendor while you're there, add my notes to yours, etc. By delegating some of the time-consuming detail work, fast-track engineers have more time to work on other areas for advancement. So learn how to delegate. Number 5, hone your communication skills. Leadership loves engineers who can articulate complex projects to others. Engineers who can express themselves clearly get invited to present to management, investors, regulatory agencies, surgeons, etc. Be one of those engineers. Take a course, read books on effective oral communication, watch and learn from the other great presenters that you see. For instance, I took a Dale Carnegie speaking course and it was terrific. So hone your communication skills. Number 6, build a project portfolio. So next time you complete a large or challenging project, Add it to your LinkedIn profile if it's not proprietary or confidential. Most people don't know that LinkedIn allows you to create a wall of projects by adding text, images, outside links, videos. Use it. This will help you build a, a wall of accomplishments that can be shared. Number 7, ask questions in group meetings. Perhaps the best way to gain visibility in your company is to ask questions in public settings. You don't have to be the smartest person in the world to ask a question. Most likely your fellow engineers have the same question in their head anyway. Be the one who asks the questions. Leaders notice this. Number 8: Assume responsibility for things that need fixing. Don't ask for permission. Take responsibility for designs, procedures, processes, presentations, reports that are broken and fix one, even if it's not in your job descriptions. Leaders love this and will label you as a go-getter, even if it's just a small thing. Number nine. This is important. Find a way to get into surgery. Every company is different. As crazy as it seems, many orthopedic companies don't want their rookie engineers to attend surgeries. This is crazy. Tell your boss you want to go. Heck, tell everyone. Invite yourself. Tell every salesperson that you meet that you want to attend surgery. The hack here is that most sales pros absolutely love to have engineers in the operating room because it makes the salesperson look better in front of the surgeon. So find a way to get to surgery. Number 10, invite a company executive to breakfast or lunch. First, you have to tell your supervisor so he or she doesn't get blindsided. You will be surprised when you ask an executive and he or she says, sure, no problem. Have a bunch of questions prepared. The real hack here is that it's really a chance for you to get visibility with leadership. The, the bottom line is engineers who are known personally by upper management tend to get promoted faster. That's a fact. Number 11, present your own work. I've seen this in big companies. Don't let your supervisor present your design work, your testing work, your analysis, whatever. Insist on presenting your own work directly to management. To make your boss more comfortable with this, Do a practice presentation with your boss so he or she can see that you're not going to make a fool out of him or her. So present your own work. Number 12, spend less time on CAD. This may be counterintuitive for many design engineers, but the more time you are on CAD, the less time you have for the other 15 areas that I'm talking about. Great CAD work will not get you more responsibility. The opposite is actually true. They will say, "Wow, Joe or Susan is really great on CAD. Let's make sure Joe or Susan designs the next blank." So great CAD skills will pigeonhole you. Spend less time on CAD. Number thirteen: Don't worry about your salary. Early in your career, experience trumps salary. After 10 years or so, you can start to compare titles and salaries with others, but, but for now, get the most experience and most responsibility as fast as possible. It will set you up for the future. Number 14, network within orthopedics. Yes, network like crazy with people in other orthopedic companies, and don't burn bridges. The industry is really small, and your next job will likely come from somebody in your network or somebody that knows somebody in your network. Number 15, another counterintuitive one: don't get an MBA. In fact, in, in place of an MBA, Learn what you need to learn about the business aspects from people who have complementary skills. Learn basic accounting, ROI, earnings, SG&A, differences in company legal structures, project management. Take an advanced engineering degree, a master's or PhD. Focus on certification courses, FDA, ISO seminars. Executive training courses, patent agent licensing— these are all better for your career advancement than an MBA. Today, technical degrees have become more important than MBAs. You have to look into the future. The future of orthopedics medicine is actually a combination of mechanical, electrical, optics, robotics, mechatronics, and there's always software involved. So the leaders of tomorrow's companies will understand how to lead people through these interdisciplinary technologies. They will not have business degrees, usually. So go get extra technical training and business training With just street smarts. All right, finally, number 16, go work for a startup. Yes, yes, yes. The earlier in your career, the better. There are many advantages to working in a tiny environment with very little resources. For more insight into the startup world, listen to podcast number 17. It's titled The 7 Benefits of Working Inside a Startup. So that's it. That's all 16 tips. Hope you enjoyed it. As always, don't forget to subscribe. Think Tiger Buford for your next key hire. Keep innovating, my friends. Thank you.
