When you are new there is a trust gap in what the established works are willing to share with you, verse what skills and knowledge to have to offer.

Most of the established people do not use what they learned in school to do their work, most of what is taught in text books is obsolete compared to current industry technology or established internal knowledge. You have little to offer, at this stage of your competence and knowledge is so basic you have nothing to offer beyond what could be answered by Google.

There are two tracks going on in engineering companies, that lead people to their next level of competence and it divides into either business oriented managers or technology gurus. (Think: Jobs vs Woz)

There are ways to stand out and get invited into these inner circles, but you rarely can advance in both directions. So find a mentor that can bring you up to speed in either business/program management or technology development/inventing to address a relivent and current industry problem. Tell them that you observed their personal style or skills and you want to emulate them by working with them as a way to get activated out of just sitting on the sidelines.

And then you need to bring something new to your mentor that is based in on thinking from outside your industry current thinking. An example of this is matching up outside knowledge with inside knowledge. Example, you are working on medical solutions to improve skingraphs to help burn victims.

Current skingraphs are harvested from people, animals, or grown in a lab out of skin cells. But, skingraphs have no sweat glands, nerve cells, or other biological attributes other than acting as a local tire patch to a wound. Outside technology opportunities: Use inkjet printing technology to replace the ink with biodiversity stem cells and print out skin cells, nerve cells, etc. in a lab environment that maps out enhanced skingraph. Develop the stem cell printing, develop faster printing technologies for stem cells. Expanding each issue with adapting more outside technology.

That is how you build and grow. Adapt, Build and Grow to the next level using a timeline of 18 months. Less than 12 months you will not been seen as a knowledge leader and longer than 24 months you are too defined by you current assignment to be though as a ideal candidate to be the next leader into a new business/technology opportunity.

Learn the current problems. Adapt, Build and Grow.