Article contributed by
Brendan Godfrey, IEEE-USA Vice-President, Career & Member Services
Amritesh Rai, IEEE-USA Young Professionals Representative

IEEE-USA has more programs of interest to young engineers! In this follow-up blog post, we will focus on services for independent consultants, the IEEE-USA Salary Service, the IEEE-USA Awards Program, and discounts for young engineers on Fundamentals Engineering (FE) exam and Professional (PE) exam study materials. You can find information on all these products and much more at www.ieeeusa.org.

1. IEEE USA offers various resources to support entrepreneurship and innovation, with a specific focus on the importance of intellectual property rights for employed individuals. One of these resources is the U.S. Intellectual Property Assistance Portal, an online Collabratec community with a large knowledge trust and resource pool on intellectual property managed by the IEEE-USA Intellectual Property Committee. Additionally, there are books such as Intellectual Property and the Employee Engineer that address the intellectual property rights of employed individuals, and webinars such as Intellectual Property 101 that cover the basics of intellectual property, including topics such as USPTO, copyright, trademarks, and patents. Readers can familiarize themselves with their personal intellectual property rights and seek guidance for navigating intellectual property issues in employment.
2. IEEE Young Professionals can join the IEEE Consultants Network to better understand the career option of independent consulting. By joining this network, you will receive a free subscription to the quarterly IEEE-USA Consultants Newsletter. The newsletter provides access to timely stories related to consulting as a career option, technology innovations for consultants, and legislative impacts on independent workers. Additionally, subscribing to the IEEE Consultants Network will provide IEEE YPs with updates on IEEE-USA webinars focused on consulting. This service will also provide strategic email updates on emergency issues related to consulting. The best part of this service for IEEE YPs is that it allows young engineers to learn what it is like working for oneself, the issues that may arise, and if independent consulting is a career path for them.
3. The IEEE-USA Salary Service is a comprehensive salary tool for individual companies and IEEE members. Users have a choice of two salary calculators — one that employs a regression model, and a second calculator that allows users to select individual filters and calculate compensation directly from the salary survey’s raw data. By using this calculator, an individual can determine the average salary of someone with a certain skill set anywhere in the country. IEEE YPs can access the salary calculator free of charge by participating in the annual IEEE-USA Salary Survey.
4. Awards recognizing professionalism, technical achievement, and literary contributions to public awareness and understanding of engineering and allied professions are presented each Fall. For instance, the Student Professional Awareness Achievement Award recognizes outstanding efforts to engage college students in IEEE fields. Candidates can typically be nominated between April and September.
5. IEEE-USA partners with PPI (a Kaplan Company) to provide discounts on study materials for the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam and the Professional Engineering (PE) Exam. IEEE-USA understands that studying for both exams can be very expensive. Our partnership with PPI is designed to lessen that expense.

We hope that YPs have found this blog post and the previous one useful and will sample IEEE-USA products. IEEE-USA would like to enhance the value of its activities for YPs. Please send your comments or suggestions to amritesh557@ieee.org or brendan.godfrey@ieee.org.