How one Brazilian engineer marketed his skills

How do you land a good job with a top company when you have only been in the United States for a couple of years?

Ask Renato S. Moura, who was born 34 years ago in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. To live and work in the United States was a long-time desire of his -- and in 1991 he fulfilled that desire by moving to the U.S. with his American wife.

He had a good education in Brazil, having graduated with a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. But now, he was faced with the hardship of finding a job and a new career in a foreign country.

Renato told this reporter that it was hard to find someone who believed in his potential and experience. So, to make himself more marketable, he chose to go back to graduate school, and enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the state of Maryland. This additional education provided him with a Master's Degree in Construction Management.

This step proved to be the correct decision for Renato Moura, and he cites graduate education at an American University as a strong and productive consideration for foreign-born men and women to make their skills more marketable in the U.S.

"We live in a very small world; we cannot afford to stop the learning process," Moura said.

It was actually at a campus interview that Renato was hired to join the prestigious Bechtel Corporation, an engineering and construction company which has offices throughout the world.

"Bechtel maintains a very diverse workforce," Moura explained, "where one must succeed based on his of her skills and not based on where you are from."

At Bechtel, Renato Moura is a member of the Office Diversity Council, which is responsible to help management on diversity awareness issues. He also just completed a two-year term as a board member of the Bechtel Employees Club.

His specific job description is in the Project Controls Department of the corporation, which is home-based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He is currently assigned as a Cost Trend Engineer.

Renato is a strong believer that everyone has the right to succeed, based on his talents. He also espouses the belief that we never know enough -- and that we should always be open to learning new things -- whether it be in business, or in languages, or in learning about other cultures.

Now the Mouras have an 18-month-old daughter named Amelia. It is Amelia's parents' aim to teach their daughter everything possible about the Brazilian culture. And, as Amelia has dual citizenship, her parents are teaching her both languages (Portuguese as well as English).

The Moura family loves to travel, having visited Brazil, Germany and the Czech Republic just last year. Renato also loves sports, especially soccer and volleyball, and he is presently learning softball.

Indeed, he practices what he preaches -- he does not stop the learning process!

COPYRIGHT 1996 Hispanic Times Enterprises
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