Recruiting for Systems Engineering

Recruiting this fall for officers is going well, but it is hard work.  You would think it would be easier since the Chesapeake Chapter is filled with outstanding professional engineers that are accomplished in many disciplines and skill sets.  But these same engineers are a humble breed of people that don’t always aspire to leadership positions until someone taps them on the shoulder and makes it obvious to them what great talents they really are.  This year’s election process has been a welcome source of good news…we have a great showing of candidate talent, and we will soon do a special mailing that introduces the slate of candidates for the board along with the ballot.  

And all this recruiting effort for new officers really got me to thinking….

Since we are on a roll, and our stated strategic purpose is to be champions and practitioners of Systems Engineering, my vision for championing SE is to do something dramatic and exceptional this year—increase our community and increase our influence by the concentrated act of everyone in the chapter toward increasing our overall membership.

Here’s my vision: every System Engineer has at least 2 good friends or colleagues that are system engineers.  If each Chesapeake Chapter member will commit to inviting and recruiting just one new SE to join INCOSE Chesapeake Chapter, we would gain an amazing boost right in the midst of this historically rough year.  This could be a major engineering accomplishment just in promoting our discipline!   This year has been one in which our normal operations have been needfully constrained and we could use an innovative activity to celebrate a different style of success. The concentrated and combined recruiting action of each of our members would show our combined ability to increase our membership, expand our influence, and produced this style of success.  Our student chapters are particularly active and growing in numbers right now.  They represent the inspiration for the future of Systems Engineering.

In a single campaign, we could achieve a noteworthy accomplishment, expand the SE community in Central Maryland, and set yet another Chesapeake Chapter standard of excellence within INCOSE International’s framework of operating chapters. 

We need each one of you to consider one or more friends and then invite and encourage at least one to join the Chesapeake Chapter.  We aren’t asking anyone to be obnoxious or aggressive.  Just be a friend and convince a friend of the benefits from joining our professional society of engineers.  All that I am asking is that each one of you tries to recruit one friend as a new member.  If our success rate is even close to 15%, we will have 50 new colleagues in the Chesapeake Chapter.  Please give this campaign some thought and give it an honest attempt with one person.  We will report back each month and let you know how we are progressing. 

Very Respectfully,

Mark