Francisco Torres Diaz for CareerVillage.org Professional Spotlight

Speakers: Francisco Torres, Industrial Engineer, Cummins Inc

Francisco Torres: Hi, my name is Francisco Torres, I'm an industrial engineer, with Cummins Inc and I work in Columbus, Indiana

Francisco Torres: As a high school student, I was actually your typical straight a student. I did really good in most of my classes, especially in science and math. My favorite subject was actually chemistry. Uh, and that can, that kind of was a gate into what I wanted to do is for my career. I actually originally wanted to do psychology, but I changed my career path after competing in an engineering competition at the national level. And that made me decide that I really wanted to focus on engineering, specifically industrial engineering.

Francisco Torres: So one of the professional mistakes I learned the most about probably happened like in the first six months I started working in the industry, there was this project that we had 100 days to complete and I was extremely stressed about it and I had a very terrible attitude about it. I wasn't focusing on completing the project, but I was just complaining about how stressful it was. So a mentor of mine kind of told me, hey you really need to change your attitude and like find ways to solve this. So I learned there that you know how you approach things and your attitude really makes a difference because from that moment that the uh 180 turn and actually became one of my most beloved projects because I really found ways to be creative and approach it in different ways and it got great results. So I learned that it's very important to have a good attitude. I always bring up solutions, not problems and you know, work hard and keep yourself focused

Francisco Torres: So one of my favorite questions that I've answered on CareerVillage was actually, what is an easy method to write, but also achieve your goals to this, I actually answered with SMART objectives. Using SMART objectives is basically using a format to write down your goals or your objectives that will allow you to have all the information that you need. to know how and when can you achieve that goal? So, SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable Achievable, Relevant and Time bound. So if you add all those elements to your objectives, basically, you're giving you enough information and very specific details that you will know exactly what you need to achieve, how you're going to achieve it. How do you know if it's achieved and when do you want to achieve it? So if you are very specific what you want, you define a metric to which you are going to be able to determine where your achieve your goal or not, if you are, if you make it such, that is something achievable in a or something that you can actually get done. Not something extremely difficult or something very complex. If it's relevant to what you want to achieve. So you have to think about this is an objective of something bigger than you want to achieve and then time bound. So you're putting yourself a timeline of when this has to end. A very easy example is saying like, if you are trying to um write a paper right, instead of saying that your objective is to finish the paper, you can say, I want to write one paragraph a day for the next week before the deadline and then and I should have it completed by 3 2 days before it's due. So that way you're um being very specific and giving yourself a smaller task and it's easier to find achieve that goal and you know how you're gonna measure it. So it's like one paragraph every day until two days before the deadline. So that gives you a better idea of how to achieve your goals.

Francisco Torres: I think the most important thing that anybody who's trying to get any role or get a promotion or advance at their career, is to make sure that you're not only working hard, but you are making sure the people know what you want. You gotta be able to communicate your goals, communicate them to the right people and ensure that everything you do has the proper visibility. A lot of people have this idea that as long as you work hard and do your job, the new promotion will come on your, your advanced by that, but it's as much as important or even more important to make sure that the right people are aware of what you're doing and that you are able to present the impact of what you're doing. So it's not just about about doing things and letting them be, but it's also about communicating what you're doing and make sure the right people are seeing it so that they can become your advocates. It's not just like trying to make look good in front of your boss or your or your leader. No, it's about doing the work, but also selling that work, you know, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you don't know how to sell it it's useless. So just make sure that whatever you're doing, people know that you're doing it and know the value that that's adding and that way you will not even have to seek that promotion, the promotion will come to you because people are going to be talking about you and they are going to know, hey, this person did this and that's amazing. Or you heard about that, what he did, It's all about creating advocates for yourself, by giving your work and your achievements the right visibility and that will make the entire difference and you will not have to seek anything. Things will come to you and opportunities will come to you.