Interviewing New Graduates 8

[nkrigPE]

I work in a small civil engineering and land surveying firm. Engineering staff has about a dozen employees. I've moved up to a position in my company where I am interviewing and making hiring recommendations to my boss.

Getting a feel for the skill sets and ability of people with some experience and conducting those interviews goes pretty well. The last couple of people with experience I have recommended we hire have turned out pretty well.

I am struggling with the how to assess the new graduates with little to no experience. GPA and some internship experience has not necessarily been great predictors on the last couple of guys we hired right out of college.

How technical are you with your interviews with new grads? Is it just a gut feeling on these people that they will work out? I'd really like to give new grads some kind of test, but I'm pretty certain that would just run them off.

What types of interview questions or processes do y'all have in place for vetting new grads and finding capable newbies?

 

[EdStainless]

My employer has just hired a few new or recent grads. A very different process to interview them for sure.
While we use a very structured interview system (interviewing in teams with guide questions) I leaned in a different direction for these interviews.
I see three keys:
1. Natural desire to do the job. To be an engineer you have to like problems solving and be able to live with some level of uncertainty, no one ever gives you enough info so asking questions and making judgements is critical.
2. Ability to communicate. Yes peoples communications skills can improve, but you are starting with decent ability it is easier to improve. Not just spoken language as much as comfort and poise are what I want.
3. No afraid to get dirty. That could be in a factory, the field, or just an undesirable part of the job it needs to be done and the new hires should expect to carry a fair part of this work.
If they can look me in the eye and convince me that they want to do the job I am interested in them.

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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube

 

[geesamand]

One of our senior engineers would interview by literally quizzing the candidate from various engineering textbooks. Not coincidentally, this fellow is also an adjunct professor and his work is highly rigorous and calculation-based. I find such exercises largely wasteful in an interview setting.

Where we are, one big question is how technical and introverted each engineer is, by their nature. We put engineering grads anywhere from R&D (highly technical, highly detailed, good for introverts and high GPA students) to outside technical sales (know the concepts behind engineering, great with people and self-motivated). In between we have inside sales roles and design engineering roles which are more middle ground. We spend plenty of time going through which of these tracks aligns best with the individual. No point putting a great candidate into a job that isn't great for them.

I look for communication skills - not everyone is a verbal wizard or wins prizes for their prose, but has to communicate effectively in some channel. I look for motivation - will they stay here long enough to be useful and skilled, or will they immediately jump to another department or company entirely. I want team players with good business culture. I look for practical decisionmaking skills - I want an engineer who knows how to numerically rationalize or perform the simplest possible calculation in order to drive a particular decision - I don't want a robot who makes a full blown analysis of everything.

We introduce our candidates to some of the design elements of our product. Just having a discussion quickly reveals their knowledge and ability to listen, communicate, and learn.

Notice that none of this is relevant to prior experience. Of course that's tremendously valuable but by no means does a lack of experience mean a short, shallow interview.

 

[WARose]

How technical are you with your interviews with new grads? Is it just a gut feeling on these people that they will work out? I'd really like to give new grads some kind of test, but I'm pretty certain that would just run them off.

What types of interview questions or processes do y'all have in place for vetting new grads and finding capable newbies?

I don't know that there is a magic question anymore than there is for seasoned personnel. I've seen a lot of guys with decades of experience under their belt that gave a great interview........and didn't turn out to be worth 2 cents on the job. You'll just have to do the best you can.

Whenever I've talked to them, I always try to get a feel for where they are at. Do they use ASD or LRFD for steel (most of them are LRFD at this point)? How familiar are they with Appendix D (in ACI 318)? (And how to design when loads are in excess of those capacities.) What have they done/not done with FEA software? And so on. If you are interviewing new grads, your expectations can't be that high to begin with.

 

[moltenmetal]

That's exactly why we now (to the extent possible) only use interviews to select people for four month, paid interviews with a defined end point, i.e. paid internships. We want them to move in for at least four months so we can discover the underlying person in their native habitat. Anybody can be perfect for a couple interviews with enough effort and planning and a little luck, but after two four-month stints as a live-in, you get a pretty solid idea just how people are going to work out!

 

[Terratek]

I have found it takes me about 6 months before I have a relatively firm grasp on whether someone should stay or go. We have a 90 day probationary period and I have had instances where I felt pretty strong after 90 days that someone I hired was the wrong fit. However, I just didn't have the confidence to pull the trigger to release them at 90 days. Chalk this up to having less than 10 years management experience, perhaps. Anyways, by 6 months, I made some adjustments of my own and that individual was able to perform as required given my changes in management. It turns out that it wasn't strictly a matter of them meeting my standards. I also needed improvement as a manager.

 

[epoisses_]

Same here. The 3 months is seen as a formality and we don't put much pressure on people during that period. And yes it's much harder to pull the trigger on someone in that situation, than to tell an inern naah we're not hiring you after your 3 months internship.
I'm totally convinced about moltenmetal's approach.

 

[Terratek]

My only problem with moltenmetal's approach is that it might not be that easy to find great candidates willing to take what could essentially be perceived as a temp job if they have other full time offers.

I know when I graduated from college, I would have laughed at the prospect of proving myself for a MAYBE job when there were plenty of offers for full time work on the table. Fast forward one year when the economy crashed in 08/09 and I would probably have jumped at the opportunity - but only if there were no full time opportunities already on the table.

All successful strategies for hiring people have to be made in the context of the overall job market.

 

[ehbadger]

@Terratek

In my experience during college and working professionally since then (graduated 5 yrs ago) generally the 4-8 mo internships are done while still as an undergrad student, before graduation. So there really isn't much of a conflict with full-time offers for most students taking internships.

Beyond that for entry-level graduates, some companies do a 18-36mo onboarding where the new hire rotates 6-9months between a few departments to find a best fit (for example, one may rotate though quality, project management/capital, safety, process/manufacturing). These are still full-time, salaried hires.

 

[moltenmetal]

Our interns are typically engineering students. The very best hires we have, are people who were picked up after graduation as the cream of the crop, selected from a larger group of people who all did one or two 4-month internships with us with some school terms between these. However, the market for engineers in Ontario and Canada generally is so terrible at the moment, particularly at the entry level, that we've seen fresh graduates- really good ones- willing to take the chance on a 4 month post-grad insternship with us (paid at the same rate we'd pay a fresh grad we take onto staff, plus a small premium for the fact they are given no employment benefits as a contract worker). It is really hard to send someone on their way after 4 months on the job unless they're dreadful, so we really prefer students who MUST depart at the end of that term. That way we can avoid being saddled with staff who turn out to be an imperfect fit, putting a strain on our VERY imperfect management skills to try to change them into what we need them to be.