Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations GregLocock on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Entry-level competency 10

Status
Not open for further replies.

dozer

Structural
Apr 9, 2001
502
Are we just having a run of bad luck at our company or is the level of competency of entry-level (say five yrs. experience and less) engineers going down in the US? I'm talking specifically in the structural engineering arena. Our last four hires have not been very familiar with any structural analysis programs like STAAD or SAP. They've displayed very little initiative when it comes to solving a problem that doesn't have a "cook book" answer. As a matter of fact, they don't even seem to know where to look in the "cook book" half the time. There fundamental knowledge of structures seems dubious at best.

For instance, when I discuss k-factors of columns in buildings none of them can offer any insight into what the current state of the art is. I would have thought having been in school much more recently than me, they would have something to say on the subject. I'm not even sure they realize the importance of understanding if the joint at the end of the column can sway or not.

Don't get too hung up on my example. This is just one of many examples. I'm wondering what other's are seeing in the workplace. I'm hoping four folks is not statisically significant and this is really not the state of what our universities are turning out.

I have some more I could say, but this is getting a little long and I would like to hear from you folks.
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Part of the problem also is that universities are requiring less credit hours to get a degree in order to move more students through. As a consequence students come out with less knowledge than grads of yesteryear in part through no fault of their own. At foreign universities for instance an undergraduate engineering degree takes about 5 years or a little more. Besides having lazy students they have less and less requirement put on them. This also leads into the discussions of requiring a master's degree to hold a PE, but that's another thread.
 
I would like to add my own experience to the discussion. When I graduated from college in my early 20's I landed a good job with a good company. As a young single man I had a hard time focussing on my career and wanting to excel at engineering. So,I went back to school for a master's degree, got married and started a family. Now, I have a strong desire to excel and I do very well at my job.

I think alot of it has to do with the maturity of the young college graduates. Some of them are probably going to have to "grow up" a little before they become good engineers.
 
Looks like a hit something of a hot button. Here are some of my observations on some of the comments made.

Mentoring: I've been asked to mentor the new engineers. And, oh yes, we need those drawings by the end of the day. Could you run an FEA on this bracket. The shop has some questions on the new parts they are fabricating. Have you got those anchor bolts designed yet? What I'm trying to illustrate is employer's pay lip service to the notion of training but the lure of making money right now (instead of investing in the future) always wins out. At least, that's been my experience.

Schools: Someone asked what schools these guys are from. Sorry, since as I've mentioned, I don't think we've done a very good job of hiring, I think it would be unfair to single schools out. I will say that two of the schools these folks have come from are very well respected.

Testing applicants: Aggman suggested testing applicants. I agree. Unfortunately, our management has told us that we can't give applicants test because we might get our butt in some sort of legal sling. I don't know what that's all about. I know there are some cons to testing but it seems to me that if a company wants to give competency/ability test then that's their right. I mean for goodness sake, to get a job now a days you have to piss in a bottle, but you can't ask someone to prove they have some basic knowledge of the job you are hiring them for. I haven't personally researched this issue, but it could be that our management is full of sh ... whoops, I mean baloney. This could be a seperate thread in itself, so if anyone wants to see more, please, by all means.
 
I have worked for 3 Consulting Engineering Companies during my career. All 3 of these organizations wanted you to magically have 5-10 years experience in anything that they asked you to work on, right from the moment that they hired you. The fact that you were entry-level or had experience in other areas than what you were being asked to work on meant nothing to them. And they made little effort to help you to get that experience. If I need to become truly proficient in all the various projects that I have been asked to work on over the years, I would be studying and working 24/7 for the rest of my life. Fat chance that I'm going to do that. Especially for a regular salary. The companies these days seem to have difficulty differentiating the difference between an employee and a partner.
 
Well I guess it depends on how you look at it. My first design job was the air control for the cooling system for a research car. They didn't use the control system I'd come up with, but they liked the mechanism and the flap, and it ended up being fitted. I was as pleased as Punch.

My first analytical job was with the same group - working out the performance figures and fuel economy for a car from the engine map and the characteristics of the car. By hand. This drove me to distraction, so I taught myself Fortran and wrote a program to work it out. That program was still being used 5 years later. Not bad for someone a year out of high school.

More than 50% of my career has consisted of being dropped into the unknown, and having to make it up as I go along. Hey, it's fun. When I've got a job down pat I get bored.

Cheers

Greg Locock
 
I think that the changes in our economy and the lean corporate techniques may have an effect. When I left school 20+ years ago, there was plenty of public and private work and most companies had extra money floating around. Since some areas of engineering (especially civil engineering)cover such broad areas, schools can only give a good general education at the BS level. Twenty years ago, a new engineer in my field would spend his first six months in the field working as a field technician, his second six months logging behind a drill rig, his third six months in the lab running materials testing and finally his fourth six month period actually writing reports and performing engineering analysis. The purpose of the two year "internship" was to acquaint the new engineer to the real world and let him see how things actually worked. His third to fifth years were generally to improve competence in enginerering prior to taking the PE exam. Unfortunately, now I see too many companies expecting the new entry level engineer to hit the ground running with absolutely no time for training. These engineers do not pick up any essential skills other than those necesary to get by with this method. So when you hire that engineer with 3-5 years experience, you may also consider the on-the-job training that he may or may not have received at his previous employer. Another interesting item that I have noted in my field; the most highly motivated engineers either rise to the upper ranks of a company or own their own company within about ten years, the least motivated engineers are about as useful as they were in year two of their experience. About 50% of the other engineers fall somewhere in between.
 
I graduated 5 years ago and my opinion is that we learn such a wide variety of subjects in the bachelor that employers of should expect to provide some training to the employee.

I also think that market dynamics are such that - the reluctance of the employer to train the employee is related to how long they expect to keep that employee.

It is difficult to find an employer who has the intent of training and keeping you & in a company that actually has a future.

New grads find themselves in a position of having "specialized" in a particular field for a certain employer for a few years, then they are layed off or the company folds and often they have to start over in another more or less related field.
 
I graduated in 2002 with my BS from a pretty good engineering school. In my experience it's the curriculum that's to blame. My teachers had never had a job outside of academia and focus on the theoretical not the practical. We had one teacher that was a retired 'real' engineer and it was the only class where we actually applied what we learned (we were given building plans and had to size ducts). In all the rest we were given idealized pictures of cantelever beams but never related them to reality. They teach you how to plug and chug, not think on your own. They give you all the information you need to go into an equation. You just have to find the equation that matches what was given.

I also agree that the variety of topics taught in school are so numerous that you only get a cursory understanding of each.

I think undergrads nowadays need to be trained initially by employers. I was looking for a program like that when I graduated and found it. Now people with 4-5 years of experience under their belt should have an idea of what's going on. That's a combination of poor schooling and poor training by the previous employer (and perhaps poor personal motivation). I have only 2.5 years of experience and feel much more competent.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor