In this episode of 'Engineer Your Success' hosted by Dr. James Bryant, the focus is on the vital skills engineering schools don't teach, which are essential for career success. Dr. Bryant is joined by Mark Levine, Talent Acquisitions Manager for Thermosystems, who shares insights into his role and the company's culture. Levine discusses the importance of soft skills, which he rebrands as essential skills, such as communication, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. He highlights Thermosystems' unique employee onboarding and development programs, including Thermo University. The conversation also delves into the importance of continuous learning, adaptability, and the application of curiosity in both personal and professional growth. Levine offers valuable advice for new engineers and those at mid-career stages, emphasizing the necessity of a growth mindset and the art of balancing career success with personal fulfillment.

The Career Advice Every Engineer Needs to Hear

[00:00:00] Engineer Your Success: Success isn't just about what you achieve, it's about living a life that reflects your values and priorities. Welcome to Engineer Your Success, the podcast that helps you lead with intention and live fulfilled.

[00:00:24] Dr. James Bryant: If you're joining us for the first time in 2025, you're catching us at an exciting moment. This year, our focus is expanding our conversations to include other engineering leaders, business owners, mental health professionals, coaches, and consultants, to help you design and live a life where you can win at work and at home today's episode. Reveals the critical skills engineering schools never teach you skills that can make or break your career skills that every organization values

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[00:00:57] Dr. James Bryant: I want to welcome you to the engineer, your success [00:01:00] podcast. My name is Dr. James Bryant. And today we have the blessing of having Mr. Mark Levine here. Mark, tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

[00:01:10] Marc LaVine: First of all, thank you for having me on your program. I don't know if. I'm a blessing or a curse in a lot of cases.

[00:01:15] I guess we'd have to ask my wife, but in any case, my background is that I'm the Talent Acquisitions Manager for Thermosystems, which is a growing systems integrator based in New Jersey, a place called East Windsor. We have roughly 21 locations around the world. And we focus primarily in the energy and HVAC environment.

[00:01:40] Our client's company is around 26 years old now. Why I say around is that this company had another start several years before the 26 years. We claim that company was a little bit different in terms of what they're doing. They were doing a lot of oil and gas and mining work. We've kind of divested ourselves of all of those things, [00:02:00] and our two founders were employees of that company, who found a way to acquire the company and build it in their own image.

[00:02:07] So they've built areas. including life sciences, district energy, mission critical, which to the west of the world means data centers. Mission critical means a lot of things to different people. NASA, for example, comes to mind. We have done work with NASA, but we also do a lot of, mission critical data centers.

[00:02:25] And now we've also added within the last year and a half, semiconductors. We're not actively working on projects there, but we're getting ready to. Everything has to do with, various types of airflow and, power issues where organizations that want to have their own micro grid or cogeneration facility can have one and we'll come in and put the controls.

[00:02:42] Engineer Your Success: At Engineer Your Success, we're here for leaders like you. Leaders who know there's more to life than just checking off accomplishments. Imagine feeling confident in your decisions, clear in your direction, and fulfilled in both your career and personal life. Whether you're looking to build executive presence, [00:03:00] master the art of dynamic balance, or lead with a greater purpose, we are here to help you make it happen.

[00:03:06] You don't have to choose between success at work and fulfillment at home. You can thrive in both. Visit www.engineeryoursuccessnow.com to learn more about how we help leaders like you turn aspirations into action and success into something truly meaningful. Engineer your success because thriving isn't just for others, it's for you.

[00:03:29] Dr. James Bryant: What are some of the things that you do as the lead for talent acquisition?

[00:03:34] Marc LaVine: Well, we're looking to grow funny story. I joined the company as a consultant. They only had at that time Roughly 60 employees, 60 or 70. They needed to grow about 10 or 12 people. I was at a job that I wasn't really happy with in the real estate development property management arena.

[00:03:49] A friend of mine, someone that works at thermal systems, mentioned this opportunity. Kind of a no chance of becoming a permanent situation. At that time I was ready for it. I really wanted to, to give. [00:04:00] Something like this to try and, I did and, I accepted the opportunity to fill those 12 openings and, I never left, we filled the 12 openings then there were about a hundred that followed probably one of the greatest opportunities in my life, to join the company.

[00:04:15] I enjoyed their onboarding immensely. I had been a director of human resources for many years for large organizations and never saw anything like this with 50 or 60 employees. And they're having such a robust onboarding program. That was my first taste of, Hey, I want to stay,

[00:04:33] Dr. James Bryant: but

[00:04:33] Marc LaVine: what would they do with me with only 10 or 12 openings?

[00:04:35] Dr. James Bryant: What were their specifics in the onboarding program that really encouraged you that this is the company that I want to stay with?

[00:04:42] Marc LaVine: I think it was well thought out, well organized, well planned. It wasn't your typical onboarding where you fill out company new hire paperwork, and here's the bathroom, here's the lunch area.

[00:04:52] They delved right into what the company does. We had a session on boilers, we had a session on chillers. I'm not an engineer, [00:05:00] but we all went through that, because you have to know what your company does. I was impressed by that. They took the time to answer questions. Various local facilities that they've worked on, so that we could see the actual work being done and what was done.

[00:05:14] It just it didn't leave anything to your imagination. It covered all bases.

[00:05:17] Dr. James Bryant: Okay I think it serves as a solid foundation to make sure that your whole organization is on the same page. How has that impacted? The company culture there at that thermal system?

[00:05:29] Marc LaVine: Well, our two owners were not happy at the original thermos systems. They found a way to acquire the company. They then set up what they call their three core principles. One is our employee relations.

[00:05:42] Another is our customer service, and then the third one is financial stability. So they've addressed all of those things. Every year, there's a industry wide survey on employee and on customer service or customer relations. We score in the top 10 percentile every year.

[00:05:56] We bend over backwards for our clients. Number two, financial [00:06:00] stability. I think we're at 60 million when I got there. Six years later, we've been 150 million plus. So we're there. And that gives us the ability to do great things for our clients and great things for our team members. And then thirdly, the employee relations piece, they really overcompensated what they said they lacked at the original company by doing a lot of great things for us.

[00:06:20] I mean, they buy lunch for everybody every single day. If anybody's been out to lunch recently since the pandemic and. with the inflation. We all know it's very, very expensive. You know, a burger and fries and a soda could be 15 at a fast food restaurant. That doesn't concern us. We know that that's part of our secret sauce.

[00:06:37] We know that helps people bond together, learn each other. They collaborate better because no one's a stranger to another. That's been very helpful. In our culture building, we've talked about this when we get to be 1000 employees in the next four to five years.

[00:06:51] We're going to continue that practice. At least that's what we believe now. We have wonderful learning and development, something called Thermo University, which, like the [00:07:00] onboarding, really shocked the heck out of me. They've had this for 12 years. That's when they had 40 or 50 employees. What company on earth do we know with that number of employees has that kind of robust training?

[00:07:12] And it's only gotten better. I mean, we have Actual curriculum, it has its own logo, Thermo University, its own course guide, many classes, just like a college, all numbered classes, covering technical, management, soft skills. We have different methods, hands on, stand up.

[00:07:30] training, and contracts with various e learning platforms. You can study 24 by 7 if you want to, all of this is transferred into our career path, which we can talk about if you want to.

[00:07:42] Which I think is very important as part of what we do. , we are asking our managers to meet with every one of their team members 10 out of the 12 months a year. Rather than the annual review where you've been making mistakes the whole year, but you don't find out until you sit down at that meeting, here, [00:08:00] what are we doing right?

[00:08:00] What's going well? Where can we improve? And more importantly, what do we need to do for you, team member, to get to where you want to go? Do you want to take a technical track? Do you want to take a management track? Or maybe you want to go to business development, become a sales engineer? These are all open to everybody, which I love about this company,

[00:08:18] everything you need to have a happy, long career is here for you. My favorite thing to share is that we had our 25th anniversary a year ago this past June. We had at that point roughly 320 or 300 employees. We have over 400 now. We took every team member and their families.

[00:08:41] to Disney World at the company expense. We had a total of 910 people, kids up to age 18, go to Disney World, the flight was covered, stay at the Dolphin hotel, tickets into the amusement parks, stipends to buy lunch if you wanted to, ground [00:09:00] transportation to and from the airport, three gala receptions.

[00:09:03] And for those of you who remember, Not this past summer, but the summer before the airlines went crazy. None of the airlines were flying on time or flying at all. Many got stuck there. Instead of coming back on Sunday, they didn't get back to Wednesday. Company said, no problem. Go sit by the pool, order another nice drink, go back to the amusement park.

[00:09:22] We'll call you when it's time to go to the airport. The company was happy to say, look, stress is not what this is about. This is a thank you for everything that you put into your jobs. This is a thank you to all the spouses and family members who have to put up with the fact that Control engineers do a lot of traveling and you do too.

[00:09:41] We weren't going to punish them by saying you stay home and take care of the kids while you're going to go and sit by the pool. Everybody come see Thermo, learn what it's about and enjoy yourself. So that's what Thermo culture is.

[00:09:54] Dr. James Bryant: I think that is a tremendous statement of the culture for your [00:10:00] organization.

[00:10:00] One of the things you mentioned. Is soft skills and I think in our previous conversation, we both agree that they're essential skills. So, let's talk about that for a little bit. Some information that you may have, or that you've observed as you are looking to.

[00:10:18] Bring people into thermal systems.

[00:10:20] Marc LaVine: Yeah, and forgive me, but I want to look at notes here because I do have some stats to share. This is something I've been very concerned about. Prior to, taking thermo. University to the next level. I was doing that alongside the hiring because we didn't know how many people we were going to need.

[00:10:38] For a guy that they didn't know they were going to keep, I now have three other recruiters reporting to me, working in different parts of the world. Now with that being a full time role, We hired a full time learning and development manager and she's hiring team members. When I took a view of what's in, well, let's start with co ops and interns.

[00:10:59] Just a [00:11:00] lack of, seriousness about the need for soft skills. Going further, finding out that a lot of colleges and universities, most of them are not really spending a lot of time on developing these skills. And then realizing that what Thermo was doing already was training people in essential skills, as we now call this area.

[00:11:20] What are soft skills for those not familiar with them? Communication skills, problem solving, teamwork, collaboration, adaptability, flexibility, leadership, emotional intelligence, we call that the EQ, negotiation, attention to detail, critical thinking, just to give people a sense that there's a lot of meat on the bone.

[00:11:39] And nobody's really addressing it. Doing some research, I found that people don't realize they need enhancement in these areas until they're mid career. They learn through making mistakes. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Doing something that turns into a storm.

[00:11:58] They can't get out of very [00:12:00] easily. That has to do with their technical education, them realizing initially that that's, what's going to get them in the door. You got to know the technical stuff. So they consider the soft skill stuff, either stuff they already know or think they know and fluff.

[00:12:15] We all have to spend a lot of time on getting everyone to realize it's not fluff. It's the other side of the coin in terms of how you succeed. Businesses spend about 92 billion a year on training, much of which includes soft skills or essential skills training. We've been saying this for years and people get to college and They can't write very well.

[00:12:40] What are our elementary schools and high schools doing? Now we're at another level where the companies are saying, what are our colleges and engineering schools doing? You know, and they'll probably tell you what they were saying years ago in the high schools and elementary schools. We don't have enough time.

[00:12:55] It's not what people are necessarily looking for, but they should. Education is [00:13:00] a conduit to the needs of business. That's why a lot of it exists. Yes, your mom and dad are proud of you. Yes, you're happy that you succeeded. But at the end of the day, in order to have a great life, you need to have the tools you need.

[00:13:14] Half a toolbox is not going to cut it. If you're great with testing troubleshooting installing and programming. You got a half a toolbox. The other half is, how do you communicate? Something goes wrong. A client needs to know what's going on. How do you say that to the client or explain it to the client in a moment where there's a lot of stress?

[00:13:36] The client is saying, Oh my God, there's a problem here. What's going to happen? What's shutting down? What's working? What's not working? You got to find a way to disengage that fear and that anger and that whatever emotions are going on And deflect over to Explaining how this is going to be done in a way that only minimally impacts what's happening.

[00:13:57] A lot of people have a hard time doing that, we all [00:14:00] go into the grocery store. Hi, how are you? We get like a blank reaction from the person serving us. This kills me. This has killed me for years. It's like. Just buy what you want, pay me and get out of my face. I don't want to know you.

[00:14:13] I don't want to have a cu that wouldn't be the person that I would put in a customer facing role. Now, does that mean people like that can't be taught these skills? Absolutely. They can, but they're unfinished products in a lot of cases. And you just can't have that. If you're a business that's looking to grow, that's known for customer service, employee, employer relations, and those areas, because they're going to.

[00:14:38] Work with people, there's no back room Scribner's anymore where you're just writing things on the computer. Everybody at some point has touch points with other people. Yeah, I think this and you also want good customer service. So it works for employee relations and customer relations.

[00:14:57] Dr. James Bryant: Yeah, I think what you're saying is absolutely [00:15:00] true. On the one hand, it's that the schools aren't preparing them and the schools may say that, hey, we don't have enough time or enough resources. We're trying, we have accreditation that we have to meet and we can only fit a certain number of classes within that framework.

[00:15:15] But I think the approach that you're taking with thermal university is key. And I think other organizations can learn from that how can you integrate the development of these essential skills? To help create the workforce that you want. Okay, you have to have the technical sales you're bringing them in You're, you're looking at where are they, right?

[00:15:38] Where are they on this spectrum of being able to communicate and being able to have these essential skills? And then you're working on ways to shore that up and that may be The way that it has to work for right now.

[00:15:51] Marc LaVine: Yeah, I think what everyone has to do in these circumstances is create Real world scenarios so that people [00:16:00] understand, Oh, that's why we do this.

[00:16:02] I recognize this, maybe not on the engineering level, but in my own personal life, I walked into that store, I was so happy to greet that person and that person just was a wall I just couldn't get beyond. And they just want, then you realize, Hey, if I, in my job have to go to a client and give them bad news, I've got to kind of have that understanding of how it may go.

[00:16:25] Yeah. And that way try to know what I need to know from learning how to present this issue. So it's a win-win for me and, and win and for my company and a win-win for the client. People don't, I think when they read a book they're so far away from the actual happenstance

[00:16:42] That they can't relate to it. But I think if you take the time and put it into real living. situations. How a conflict gets started. We've all had those as kids and as adults. To understand that it's not very much different, but you could prevent it. When we grow up for some reason, we're not bullies [00:17:00] anymore, hopefully.

[00:17:00] It's not like, meet me at the 7 Eleven behind the store and we'll deal with this. We've got to make a better ending here. It can't end that way or, we're both going to go to jail conflict resolution is an adult thing that can be taught. When you're younger and you have the emotional IQ to be able to control your emotions and then you find the right words to be able to talk your way out of a situation that you may regret later.

[00:17:28] So, real world, I think that's the answer and that can easily be done. You could do it even virtually these days with the technology that's out there. You could put yourself into that situation and see it evolve. I look forward to a better day with this stuff where companies don't have to spend $92 billion to do that work, and colleges and universities realize that that's all part of the toolbox that present to employers and present to the world a fully integrated individual that's got all the [00:18:00] tools they need to hit the ground running from day one.

[00:18:03]

[00:18:03] Dr. James Bryant: So some of the things that come to mind for me listening to your take is. When we're putting together workshops at engineer success, we use real world scenarios, like case studies or,

[00:18:16] role play. What we found is that sometimes people have difficulty seeing. The deficit in themselves or working on that, but they have no problem pointing out the deficit in a scenario or in other people. And what we talk about there is, okay, let's look at that. Have you ever been in a situation where X, Y, and Z has happened?

[00:18:37] And there's also this recognition that the very things that you may struggle with in communication and relating to people. At work, maybe the same things that may be inhibiting your ability to have success in your personal life. A lot of what we talk about here at engineer success is. What are the tools, the tips and techniques that [00:19:00] you can have so you can win at work and at home is not just about success in one or the other.

[00:19:06] I think that you can structure things so you can have success in both.

[00:19:10] Marc LaVine: I agree with you there. And I think at first you have to establish what your mindset's going to be. And if you read the book, you know, there's really not a choice.

[00:19:17] It's got to be a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed one. You got to let things in to you, and then you can filter them and analyze them, but you got to admit that, maybe I'm a blank slate and, there are things that I should be open to, to being able to learn about myself and accept the fact that I may have to develop myself further.

[00:19:39] If you go into it thinking that you're a finished product at 21 or 22, or any age, quite frankly, my grandmother was 82 and she got her associate's degree in a nursing home, because it's something she always wanted to do and just couldn't, this is many years ago when women didn't even go to college very much, she went and realized that this is something that I just, Feel that I really want to [00:20:00] go out of life with and she did it I just applaud her for it I don't know what the degree was in but you know, what doesn't matter it You know She made use of that time where you know She was declining in health and other things to still better herself And I think that's a good example to use for everyone Especially those people that have a whole career and a whole life ahead of themselves.

[00:20:19] You're not done yet there are people that are in their 50s and they audit courses. I mean people Really realize that learning is a lifelong process and you need to learn that and not think that you have everything you need to go to work and be successful. First of all, the world is changing regularly.

[00:20:37] If you would have asked me when I got out of college if I knew what AI was or if I knew what the web was, I knew the web was around in the 60s because it was used for the military, but the World Wide Web, with Facebook, no, we had no clue. We were still using the phone to recruit people, using the phone book, reading newspapers and magazines to find out who got promoted to figure out what they [00:21:00] were doing to see whether or not we can recruit them.

[00:21:02] You can't think that things are always going to be the same and that you're always prepared. Got to adapt. I'm late in my career, and I'm still adapting. I'm reading every book about AI that I could find because I'm just amazed by it.

[00:21:15] Dr. James Bryant: No, absolutely. You have to be continuously learning.

[00:21:19] Another thing I encourage people to do is to apply curiosity. You really want to be curious about what's going on around you. So that you can grow. If you come to a situation where you're closed and think you already have the answer, you're not curious, but when you're curious and start going through these, what if scenarios, what if I could do that?

[00:21:42] I'm just curious. What does X actually do? What does this actually do? You open yourself up to finding solutions. You would have never imagined had you remained closed off.

[00:21:52] Marc LaVine: Well, isn't creativity in that respect also innovation? . Which is something most engineers understand.

[00:21:58] We look at Elon Musk, [00:22:00] for example, and realize electric car and the things that he's doing with SpaceX, some of that stuff was done earlier with NASA but now we're getting into a scenario where we're going beyond that. So there's new technology. Look at spacesuits, for example.

[00:22:13] When I grew up, they were these big, bulky things, you know, that were carrying the tube and the case.

[00:22:18] Dr. James Bryant: Yeah.

[00:22:19] Marc LaVine: And now it looks like something from a futuristic space movie from the 1960s or 70s. We're there already, you know, like Jules Verne today, you know, it's like, we could go to the moon.

[00:22:30] Yeah, well, we've been there. Look what star trek has given us a lot of those things we see in star trek. We're using today the flipped phone Which we don't even use anymore most of us. That was the communicator, you know, We haven't got the phasers yet. Thank god, i'm sure the tricorder will be around very shortly Because we'll figure out how healthy people are by scanning them, it's a wonderful world this just goes not just for the technology, the equipment, but it also goes for us as individuals and how much better we can be, what more we can do.

[00:22:58] People in the 1850s [00:23:00] died at age 40. We're living to, my mother's going to be 101. I'm thrilled to talk to her about, my God, when she was a little girl, she remembers people still riding horse and buggies, or she'll tell you about her Chinese restaurant experience. She had a dime and got change back.

[00:23:14] For a Chinese dinner and went to the movies with it, you know, so she's seeing things like AI, whatever. And she's interested. What is it? She's not going to use it, but she just wants to know what's happening out there. It's an exciting world and people need to realize that they need to adapt and change and not be afraid of it, embrace it, and it will make them better.

[00:23:34] Dr. James Bryant: So what suggestions do you have for someone who's listening in? Maybe they're struggling with adapting. And changing, right? They see AI, they see technology, or they're looking at their particular career path or their field, and things are changing so fast. Where's a place for me?

[00:23:52] Marc LaVine: It all starts with education. You got to read a lot. People aren't reading enough. Don't have attention spans anymore like we did years ago. You miss a lot of [00:24:00] that because what typically you would do is you read something, get interested in it, and then go look for more. Which I hope people do, because now, like I said, they do have AI, you do have search engines.

[00:24:11] To understand what is going on in these particular fields. Where's the growth? What's coming next? What comes after AI? Who knows? Uh, but if you do a little research, the people out there that are pretty smart, kind of have a sense of where we're headed next. And then you have to use your own Critical analysis and your own ability to make the proper judgments as to is this a real deal?

[00:24:34] Is this something I need to be concerned about or is it just one person's view? When you read a lot you see that it all constells with a lot of the experts We're all kind of discussing the same thing and then you got to be an early adapter and go out there and make the adjustment If there's a new soft skill and I'm reading constantly people would think oh Would that list you read, Mark?

[00:24:58] That's it. I can give you a [00:25:00] list of a hundred soft skills, not just the ten that I read. And then I'm reading that they're offshoots of these, these skills that you can continue to learn. When I write my blog, I'll usually read other people's blogs, and they'll allude to something. My next post will be what they alluded to, because a lot of people haven't taken it that far yet.

[00:25:18] And then that becomes its own essential skill. So some of them are larger, kind of like what thermal systems is. We're a systems integrator. Okay, energy power, but now you break it down to district energy, life sciences, mission critical. And then, and I'm sure there are others that we can look at.

[00:25:33] And years ago, we talked before the pandemic about power generation. Same thing with the soft skills and the technical skills. What else can you learn? That will expand you and make you ready for what's coming next. Very quickly, we all could think about the year, 1999.

[00:25:50] What was the big thing back then? Year 2000. Those people who didn't adapt at that point, because they made a lot of money, the COBOL programmers, in taking on all those assignments. [00:26:00] They didn't adapt a lot of them and that knocked them right out of their jobs and right out of their industry.

[00:26:05] Instead of going into, HTML and all that stuff that was big back in that time, they stuck with COBOL. Some of them were lucky there were jobs still available. I think there are still COBOL people today, but for the bulk of them, they didn't look to the future. Object oriented programming, whatever the case may be.

[00:26:23] They should have been looking and saying, I gotta get out of this gig with this global thing soon. And maybe in 1997 or 1998 started learning what's gonna come next after the Y2K bubble burst. That's a very good example, of forward thinking.

[00:26:37] Dr. James Bryant: So we've talked about advice that you would have for folks that may find themselves in mid career or toward the end of their career.

[00:26:44] What advice, would you have for younger engineers that are just entering the workforce? What's, a few pieces of advice that you would have for them?

[00:26:53] Marc LaVine: First of all, I think something that's never changed with people coming out of school is a period of career floundering. [00:27:00] I find that a lot of them get very, very upset about it.

[00:27:02] They feel they're failures if they go through that. I'll be the first to tell you, there are jobs that I didn't even stay out long enough to have on my resume these days. You know, I got out of college and my mother in law insisted that I work with her at Bloomingdale's. She had a job in the construction area as a buyer trainee.

[00:27:21] I came from a retail family and had no interest in that whatsoever. I remember arguing with her saying, I want to be in the operations area. I want to Because my college major was actually radio TV broadcasting, and I just never went into that. I took a job called the Sociology of Work and fell in love with that whole concept of work.

[00:27:39] And I got a job in an employment agency for 95 a week, draw versus commission. Commuted as a married man back and forth to New Jersey. Best job I ever had, incidentally, because that set me on a path. So the career flattering went on. No, retail was not for me. It's not interested in buying little job in employment agency, boy, I could learn a little bit about what I want to do [00:28:00] next, which is how do I find my way into an HR job at that time?

[00:28:03] It was personnel. It wasn't a chart yet. And then once I got to HR to go through the whole movement of generalist to learn about benefits and compensation and talent acquisition only to find that talent acquisition or recruiting, if you will, was the thing that I love most about it. Bad employee relations and learning and development.

[00:28:21] You can have benefits and compensation, no interest whatsoever, not fun, not exciting to me. I mean, to other people,

[00:28:27] I built a whole career over these years out of different aspects of what I do. I did a little bit of work in recruitment advertising. In the days where the newspapers had display ads, I wrote those display ads for Shaker Advertising.

[00:28:40] He was a vendor of ours, and then he became my mentor, Jerry Crispin, who's like the father of technology recruiting. I can call him about anything. Even to this day, he's probably 80 now. Mark, learn AI, if you're going to stay. So I think that They should not worry about the career floundering because eventually it's going to put them in the right place.

[00:28:58] Don't punish yourselves [00:29:00] and then explore further your own career that you want to be in and see where it's going to take you, you know, like at Thermosystems, the career pathing again. You want to be more of management. You want to be more technical. You want to be business development, but all of those start with the same premise.

[00:29:16] You're a control engineer. Just how do you want to use those control engineering skills? You know, do you want to prepare proposals? Do you want to talk to potential clients? Manage a team or delve deep into the technical aspects of control systems?

[00:29:29] It's all there for you, but you just have to be able to expose yourselves to what's out there, read about it, talk to people, go on LinkedIn, link up with people that Don't be bashful. Ask them questions. This is all life's learning. This is how you explore, and then you follow a logical sense of what you're best at, what you're most interested at, and where you want to spend, maybe not your [00:30:00] whole life, but at least the next five or seven years.

[00:30:02] People change careers within careers several times during their career, and that's fine too. And you shouldn't knock yourself by thinking that either. It's like, Is each step that you're taking a forward step? Maybe you take a half step back sometimes to go forward, but overall, in the bigger scheme of things, are you getting to where you want to be?

[00:30:23] And most importantly, are you happy being there? Because we are not our jobs. We are people doing jobs, but jobs are a major part of what we do. We're with our employers and our co workers more than we're home with our family and sleeping. Even if we're working remote.

[00:30:39] I'm on a screen all day with candidates from all over the world, the managers, you know, we can't escape that. So if you're going to do it and life is short, you might as well enjoy it. And if you're not enjoying it, you're only going to be a drag on everybody because you're not going to give the best customer service.

[00:30:54] You're not going to be a great colleague. Get the heck out of it and find something else to do. But the [00:31:00] overall point of all that is, yeah, seek. Satisfaction inside yourself, even if you change careers and say, and some of our people do control engineers, not for me, you know, it was at one time. Maybe it's not.

[00:31:12] I don't want to travel. I wasn't married. Then it's not a defeat to go into something entirely different. That's your life. That's your biography. That's what's going to be written about you in the book of life. But were you happy? You know, did you please your family? Did you take care of them? My point, I think, is just that live your lives and don't get hung up on the small stuff,

[00:31:34] Dr. James Bryant: I think that's a great way to look at Concluding this episode, live your life and don't worry about the small stuff.

[00:31:43] Marc LaVine: When you're living a great life and your career is going the way that you would hope for, you're better for yourself. You're better for your family. And probably most importantly, you're better for the world.

[00:31:54] Dr. James Bryant: Mark. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. If folks want to get in contact with you, [00:32:00] what's the best way that they can do that?

[00:32:02] Marc LaVine: You'll find me on LinkedIn very easily. you'd probably be able to find me on Facebook where I run groups on both LinkedIn and Facebook, my email address is mark, M A R C dot Levine L E V I N E at thermosystems, all one word.

[00:32:14] com. please feel free to reach out to me. I always have time to help people.

[00:32:18] Dr. James Bryant: So we'll put your email address in the show notes. we'll also put a link to your LinkedIn newsletter that you, create on the blog that you have. folks will be able to read that all about career advice and growing your career.

[00:32:31] it's great information. That's there, and so we'll make sure that people will have that, and be able to use that as a resource Mark. I want to thank you for interviewing on the podcast. I'm going to end the podcast episode like I in every podcast episode. And as this many people know what to do.

[00:32:49] Fewer people know how to do it, and there's a select group of people that are actually following through doing it, and they're living the life of their dreams. Mark, I want to thank you for being part of that select few