Want to be a good engineer? Be an artist

After successfully conducting 3 interview sessions for recruitment since the last three consecutive years (Alhamd'Allah) I've met some incredible writers, beautiful poets, good readers, amazing team players and people with notable talents. Sadly their strength, for them, is their greater weakness.

Whenever I ask them, "Aur is sab (engineering) kay ilawa kia kartay ho?" They usually state; studies, studies, studies. As if, being a painter is not a notable thing to mention. When I ask a poet to share some of his verses, he assumes that I am joking, and then he expects that the next question will be; "define traffic engineering".

Yesterday, I asked a fresh graduate during her interview, what type of books do you read? She said, "sir you won't be interested, because they all are novels and mostly fiction". She never realized that every constructed structure was once an assumed model, once a part of someone's imagination, was once a 'fiction'. The strongest plus point of a book reader is: That he or she can "read". The person who can read lengthy novel, it's quite easier for him or her to read reports.

Same day, I asked another person what do you sketch? And believe me he was half disappointed and half shocked that what type of questions I am asking in a professional engineering environment. He never realized every good detailed design was once just a sketch. If a person can sketch the most complex machinery of the world i.e. humans. He can sketch any of the most complicated ideas of the engineering world.

Third most interesting person I met yesterday was a programmer. An urban engineer and also expert in programming. I asked, why you leant this language. He said, (totally embarrassed) I seriously don't know. I saw some videos of Python and I just learnt this. For me it was like hiring two persons at the same time. Two majors in one person. Or even better than a team of traffic engineer and software engineer. But he was only embarrassed.

The last different person I met in this interview session was a person who had no desire to travel, move, or even snore for fun. He explained that, a) he does not like traveling, b) he hates to get up from his desk, c) he is not a team player. So he was totally confused what to do. He never knew his strength i.e. not getting frustrated by sitting at one place and to perform highly technical work.

Please note my dear fresh engineers:

1. A poet can write a better report
2. A reader can grab quickly
3. A painter can explain well
4. A programmer can learn the software easily
5. A very social person can propose most socially acceptable design

It's just about transforming the art, to make a real world object