Five reasons to be a part of the IEEE Young Professionals Community!
IEEE Young Professionals is an international community of volunteers who are in the early phase of their career
Why should a student member of IEEE continue with Young Professionals after graduation? — This is a really valid question especially in the context, as a student, we can be a part of IEEE, by paying the student membership of $27 while as a professional membership, there is a huge spike in the membership fee ($80). Apparently, during the first year, if you renew along with the IEEE Day, you might get a $30 discount.
The key membership benefit as a professional member is you can be a part of the Young Professionals program (for 15 years since the year of the first Graduation).
IEEE Young Professionals is a unique platform where you can connect with members of members of similar interest and passion yet from different fields (which is the best part of it!). There is so much of possibility to learn and expand your network by being a part of YP.
Unlike Student Members (who have a few well known common IEEE membership benefits, say IEEEXtreme or IEEEmadC or Student Branch Awards) — the YP provides different opportunities for the different members as their field of interest and domain.
Though the Young Professionals offers unique takeaways for everyone, I’m summing up the top 5 reasons why you should be involved in a YP community!
1. Section Young Professionals Affinity Group
Most of the Sections have an active Young Professionals Affinity Group and organize activities which you can get involved. They are the local point of contact for you to engage and communicate with peers. YP emphasizes on doing a variety of activities for its members ranging from soft skill building, technology awareness, leadership and networking.
Get in touch with your local Section YP
2. Get involved with technical societies
IEEE has 39 technical societies which are focused on providing field-oriented membership benefits to the community. Most of the societies have representatives from the Young Professionals who actively get involved with the society-oriented activities and represent the society in the various events and conferences. As a YP, you can connect with people from similar interests in your field of the domain and volunteer to offer and receive mentoring and support which is crucial for your career growth.
Get in touch with YP Representative of your relevant society
3. Volunteer. Lead. Inspire.
When you become a Young Professional — especially if you have a good volunteering experience as a student — you can easily mentor and support the other student members with your learnings. This is the best way to pay back to the community that helped you grow! The number of things that the students will learn from you will be high and volunteering helps you to master skills like time management in the early phase of your career.
From my experience, as a Young Professional, there is more scope to innovate and initiate new project ideas that will help the larger community compared to a student volunteer times — where your scope is mostly limited to the Student Branch.
4. Connect. Network. Learn
‘Your network is your net worth.’ ~ Porter Gale
While you volunteer for the Young Professionals or event attend a few simple events as a YP member, you will be connected with a range of people across the diverse fields which can be valuable.
For me personally, working in an Educational background, I value the connections that IEEE provided me with a lot. Today, I can see my fellow Young Professionals being researchers, working as Professors in academia, as aspiring Entrepreneurs, employees of reputed global organizations, Startup folks, tech enthusiasts, public speakers and what not — it’s a very diverse yet a focused community aligned to the tagline of IEEE: Advancing Technology for Humanity.
5. Experience is the biggest reward!
IEEE Young Professionals also has a set of awards to recognize the volunteers for their contributions to their community. However, I would say the biggest reward that you get back is all the experiences that you make as a Young Professional in the early stage of your career.
Learning will happen at its best only when you are absolutely passionate and confident about what you are doing — IEEE Young Professionals is definitely a platform that provides the same. While the things that you handle in the work environment can be of high stakes and you’re not at all prone to any experiments, here is Young Professionals community — where you can explore and experiment with different ideas and learn from the same. This is a huge addition, which boosts the confidence and also accelerates your own skillsets and knowledge.
I’m sure that Young Professionals offer different things to different people as I wrote in the beginning. Get involved. Volunteer. Find your own reason and write your own version of the 5 reasons to be with YP! Always welcome. :)
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I’m Aravindhan, volunteering as Young Professionals Representative for the IEEE Professional Communications Society. You can find more information about me here, about.me/aravindhan
Feel free to write to me for any queries, aravindhan.a.in@ieee.org
