A coming engineering shortage ? ---- Who agrees ? 86

[MJCronin]

A recent article says that there will be an acute shortage ... particularly in the electrical field !!!

http://www.csemag.com/single-articl...hortage/7b350ef419c231a9f82abc6c8bd8fac4.html

Who agrees ???

Who strongly disagrees ???

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[spraytechnology]

http://www.smh.com.au/business/work...ns-struggle-to-find-jobs-20161220-gtes3q.html

Engineers imported from overseas as Australians struggle to find jobs
Anna Patty


When Kenan Toker enrolled to study electrical engineering specialising in power generation, he thought he would be training for a job in a growth industry full of opportunities.

But after graduating with his engineering degree earlier this year, Mr Toker, 24, from the Sydney suburb of Mosman, struggled to find a job

 

[moltenmetal]

spraytechnology: I can tell you from our own experience that terminating a professional employee "with cause" in cases where there hasn't been something as obvious as breaking the law, is more than merely difficult- it is next to impossible here in Canada. Most companies instead choose to "package" people out, i.e. it costs the company a severance package which is not an insignificant amount of money. A poor fit in hiring can be very costly in cold hard dollars and cents, forgetting about the efforts on the part of management to make sure that the problem actually lies with the individual and isn't something they can correct.

Workplaces in general can become "closed shops" because hiring competent people from a pool of applicants is difficult, time-consuming work to do well, and does bring a high risk of failure. That's why people are so big on "networking", because most positions are filled through contacts within the networks of the current employees. That's a hard thing to break into as either a fresh grad or a fresh immigrant, and next to impossible to break into in a saturated labour market.

 

[spraytechnology]

Moltenmetal, In Australia 99% of professional jobs get filled by networking. It is so easy, from time to time we advertise on SEEK directly or via an agent, but the results are disappointing to say the least. We get tens of resumes 99% not event close to requirements. The agents usually bring in 3-4 resumes that at times are too perfect. Must be more than 10 years I recruited someone by way of an agent and than it was a very specialised role in a hard location.

 

[WARose]

That's why people are so big on "networking", because most positions are filled through contacts within the networks of the current employees.

I've worked at several places where that was just a total, unmitigated disaster. Buddies getting buddies hired and then they'd get fobbed off on the unsuspecting people who didn't know them. One boss I had fixed that one fast: he set it up where if you got 'em hired......you are the one who will work with them. That cut down on some of it.

 

[nonplussed]

In my opinion, at least in Australia, the saturation of the engineering market (and the engineering shortage lie) has nothing to do with employers or employees. And especially has nothing to do with xenophobia, racism, bigotry etc. If there are 1000 applicants and only 10 positions, the 990 engineers who don't get accepted is not because of discrimination. Even before an employer has received a single CV the market is already saturated.

- The government advertises to the world saying 'Hey everyone, we have an engineering shortage! You'll definitely get a great high paying job if you come here. Just give us the $5000 visa application fee, non-refundable of course, and we'll make sure you have a great opportunity waiting for you when you arrive.'
- The engineering bodies advertise to the world saying 'Come to Australia. We have an engineering shortage and it'll be incredibly easy to find a great high paying job here. Just give us $1000 to transfer you accreditation otherwise you'll be placed at the back of the list. Still can't find a job? Well dummy, that's because you're not chartered! Just give us the $1600 chartered application fee and you'll have a job in no time!'
- The universities advertise to the world saying 'Have you heard Australia has an engineering shortage? Well unless you're educated in Australia you'll be looked upon unfavourably when applying for jobs. But don't worry! Just give us $3000 per unit per semester for 5 years and we'll make sure you come out with a great qualification that will put you top of the list when applying for jobs. Did we mention there's an engineering shortage?'

Migration is big money for government, engineering bodies, and universities. They're not going to let saturation of the market stop them from making a nice bonus.

 

[moltenmetal]

We had the same problem here about two decades ago. The Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, now called Engineers Canada, the federal association of our provincial engineering regulatory bodies, was making a substantial fraction of its revenue by selling "credential assessments" to prospective immigrants, which were then rejected by CCPE's constituent members (the provincial regulatory bodies who actually grant engineering licenses).

Later our at the time brand-new engineering advocacy body in Ontario (OSPE) got in the mix. It was offering training courses to engineers and soon realized that it was worth trying its hand at providing a "job skills" program to foreign-trained engineers attempting to find work in Canada. This was during the 1999-2003 peak of "skilled worker" immigration, when as many immigrant engineers were trying to settle in Toronto alone as we were graduating from all our CEAB-accredited university programs in the entire country combined. It was when that program, which was costly to both the provincial government body that funded it as well as to the participants in the program, failed to find positions for about half of its pilot participants during what was constantly hyped in the media as a period of "generalized shortage of skilled workers", that OSPE started wondering what was really going on in the engineering labour market.

Regrettably it took twelve years- between 2003 when the problems with the OSPE program came to light, until 2015, before OSPE could manage to get its head around the fact that not only was there no engineering labour market shortage, but rather the exact opposite- a massive, persistent and growing market over-supply. That's when OSPE finally issued the report I've linked to repeatedly here. Of course because senior people in the profession to this day still either refuse to believe the data, or perhaps more cynically because some of them profit personally from the ongoing oversupply, the report was not promoted actively by OSPE and has therefore had virtually no useful effect. It has had no meaningful impact on Canadian immigration or Ontario educational policy that I can detect. But it does serve as a useful source of data to counter these claims of "shortage!" when they (continue) to rear their ugly heads.

 

[CWB1]

I've worked at several places where that was just a total, unmitigated disaster. Buddies getting buddies hired and then they'd get fobbed off on the unsuspecting people who didn't know them.

My experience has also been that nepotism in hiring rarely leads to anything but incompetence. I'm not sure which is worse, giving friends/family hiring preference or graduates of a particular school. The first isnt too popular IME as many companies have policies against it. The later OTOH is scarily popular, particularly among managers who are also school sports fans/boosters. Personally I've always recommended hiring the best candidate for the position. With today's recruiters advertising on the internet hiring is a pretty simple process. Either folks can prove their worth in the application/interview process or they cant, the risk is only in hiring those who cant claim any experience.

 

[IRstuff]

"managers who are also school sports fans/boosters"

That's rather broad brush, and ignores the fact that certain schools simply are better, and their students are culled from the cream of the crop to start with. Given a choice, would you hire a doctor that graduated from Harvard vs. one that graduated from Instituto Tecnologico de Santo Domingo?

Would you pick a BSEE from Stanford or one from Texas A&M? In the TV series "Suits," the law firm Pearson Hardman hires only Harvard Law graduates.

Now, from actual experience, I can only anecdotally say that I once interviewed someone from a large school known for sports, and the interviewee, who allegedly had nearly 4.0 GPA, couldn't solve a simple TTL circuit problem, even after been told what the solution was, and then proceeded to not be able to solve the same problem yet again later in the day.

I disagree that the government, per se, has a motive; the upfront fees will never fully cover the unemployment costs later on. Nevertheless, politicians, being in the pockets of big business will spout the business party line, because it's always in the best interest of business to get cheap labor, particularly if the technical risk is sufficiently low. There was a brief period of time when India was successfully marketing to off-shore receptionists, by having a someone in India live on a monitor in the foyer, ready to assist the incoming visitors. While we never partook of that, we also never replaced our receptionist.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[Tunalover]

Not to change the subject, but I challenge the notion that a low unemployment rate is a healthy sign in the USA. That statistic does not factor in those that had skilled, well-paying jobs but were culled by heartless employers for any reason (or no reason at all per at-will employment law), couldn't find work in their field, and ended up taking jobs at much lower pay out of desperation. A chemist who ends up working at WalMart has no effect on the unemployment rate! It's just more "smoke and mirrors" by the US government (owned by big business). IMHO, the government and big business in the US have lost their moral and ethical compasses. Government bureaucrats are unwilling to publish solid employment metrics that provide information that is immune from manipulation.

H. Bruce Jackson
ElectroMechanical Product Development
UMD 1984
UCF 1993

 

[CWB1]

That's rather broad brush, and ignores the fact that certain schools simply are better, and their students are culled from the cream of the crop to start with. Given a choice, would you hire a doctor that graduated from Harvard vs. one that graduated from Instituto Tecnologico de Santo Domingo?

Would you pick a BSEE from Stanford or one from Texas A&M?

I can only share my experience, which has been that managers who discriminate against candidates that didnt attend their own alma mater tend to also be bigger sports boosters.

As for "better" schools, while I've known a few top engineers from "top" schools, most that I've known from those schools have been rather average and some disappointingly below average in success after college. In decades past stereotypes about graduates may have been more true but IME today its a fool's errand to make such assumptions. Personally, success after graduation speaks louder than school lore to me. While its nice to hire the most highly educated folks available from what others perceive as "top" schools, I'd weight patents, papers, and significant projects as much more important on a resume and better indicators of future success.

 

[IRstuff]

"That statistic does not factor in those that had skilled, well-paying jobs but were culled..."

That's what happens when you use a single value to gauge the economy. Nevertheless, the detailed statistics exist, and are not buried by anyone, government or otherwise, which is why

https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth

has a nice graphic that shows that there are truckloads of STEM graduates who are not working in STEM. None of the conclusions are necessarily new. I graduated in the late 70s, and all those bright shiny math majors found out that there really weren't that many jobs for theoretical math majors, so they did programming, and even some jobs that were at least partly math related, like accounting and actuarial work. Then, there also those that majored in Eng.Lit. and History in a heavy-duty engineering and science school, so they ditched their STEM option even before graduation.

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[cranky108]

Would you pick a BSEE from Stanford or one from Texas A&M?

Not knowing the quality of the school at Stanford, I would choose the Texas A&M grad. After all none of those Eastern schools seem to shine very brightly in the Western US.
The quality of the grad's has little to do with the quality of the school in what I have seen. There maybe some edge, but it is not a complete advantage.

The problem as I see it is book smart does not always translate into being able to actually make quality decisions.

Also the company culture has a big influence in the employment outcome.

And the grad from down the street, who has lived in this community all his/her life is more likely to stay here.

 

[GregLocock]

Good to see inverted snobbery is alive and kicking. Any more prejudices that need to be displayed?

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[Tunalover]

GregLocock take a look at grade inflation at Ivy League schools. At most of them (not all) if you can afford the cost and/or make a hefty contribution and/or have stellar grades you will be admitted. But once your in, a high GPA is almost guaranteed, unlike non-Ivy League schools where it's usually a "weed them out", "sink or swim" environment.


H. Bruce Jackson
ElectroMechanical Product Development
UMD 1984
UCF 1993

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I went to a state school and I think the retention rate inside the program was around 40%. The joke was look to your left and look to your right, both those people will graduate with an engineering degree. I have strong misgivings about that. There were a lot of people that were basically shredded by the weed out class, fourier analyses, which is nothing like what most people do on the job. A lot of the shredding felt like it was weeding people out for grad school.

If I were to try to hire on a trait of new hires, it would be the ability to self teach. It doesn't have to be complicated stuff but can you pick up a standard, read it, and actually understand what you read. Or even just dig into a hobby that required them to bootstrap themselves.

 

[GregLocock]

http://www.gradeinflation.com/

Good luck finding data.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[IRstuff]

Regardless of the grade inflation or not; almost all the top schools have already selected the top 4-5% of high school students. And, the typical of these students have had something like 10 AP classes and, often, full IB diplomate classes, on top of 99% SAT scores.

Someone I know was able to get through the UC Berkeley EECS program in 3 years and with a $100k job offer on the table at the start of their junior year. but, obviously, that's a special case; there are also lots of CS majors still looking for jobs.

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[spraytechnology]

Many Ivy L schools graduates are not worth the paper, and not only in engineering, there are there because of the silver spoon and priviledged background. Fair to say some do get good training due to superior resources.

Weeding process should start even before uni/college acceptance. The inflation in number of students, a fact loved by gov and institutions, is detrimental in the long run as many waste their time and money in futile direction.

Factoring the globalisation that drives significant market changes and immigration, it is clear that the individual is a foot soldier who 's faith unknown.

Recently I notice in Australia at least, hundreds of job in engineering and related, advertised by 99% recruiting agencies. I thought wow the market must be hot ,,,, but I doubt I think is rather flat......so I wonder now what the many recruiting agencies are in fact doing ?

 

[IRstuff]

"Many Ivy L schools graduates are not worth the paper"

That would be true, in general, of any school you care to pick; unlike Lake Webegone, there is no school where every graduate is above average. Every school has slackers, party hardies, etc. That's not particularly meaningful nor useful. A B+ GPA graduate from UC Berkeley, Caltech, or MIT is still statistically more likely to be a better engineer than a B+ GPA graduate from most schools.

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[CWB1]

A B+ GPA graduate from UC Berkeley, Caltech, or MIT is still statistically more likely to be a better engineer than a B+ GPA graduate from most schools.

I'd recommend a statistics refresher. Even adding the Ivys to those schools, you're still talking about a statistically insignificant number of graduates, <1%. You'd also be discounting a major chunk of the total population, not bc they didnt attend one of these schools but bc they werent eligible through no fault of their own. Collegiate grade inflation aside, many of these "top" schools only consider candidates from high schools which unethically inflate student grades beyond a 4.0 on an almost infinite scale, much the same as many colleges do today.