Quality Of New Hires and Recent Grads 44

[Wolves1]

I was hoping I could get some feedback from some of my fellow civil engineers on this board. I am an engineer working for a small firm. I have grown as an engineer over the years and have been fortunate enough to be able to aid in the hiring process for our firm. What I have come to notice is that the quality of new hires/recent grads have been less than desirable. I'm not saying that they aren't bright or not motivated because they are. However, in my humble opinion colleges today are just not doing a good job preparing these graduates for the work force. And I don't think this is anything new. I didn't feel particularly prepared for the work force when I graduated either and I had a leg up on most of my classmates. I was a second generation engineer and worked through college at an engineering firm.

In most cases the new graduate lacks the following skills.

[ul]
[li]Limited if any CAD skills[/li]
[li]Lacks practical knowledge of most types of design[/li]
[li]Does not have a good grasp of the design process[/li]
[/ul]

Again, I don't want to seem like I"m coming down hard on these people as I was probably in a similar state when I first graduated. From talking with my family (many of whom are engineers) this just seems to be the norm and has been this way for many years. In our case it seems like we have to spend 1-3 years training the person up to be an effective engineer for us.

With that being said, I would like to get hear some of your opinions on hiring new graduates for your firms. I realize we are in a small market and that could affect the talent pool, but in general I would be interested to hear what some of your experiences have been and if you have any solutions that helped you train your employees.

Also, is there anything in particular you do to reduce training costs and get them up to speed quicker? Do you have a specific training program for new hires? etc.

Thanks in advance for your advice! It is greatly appreciated!

 

[Terratek]

I second David's sentiment. You really have to talk so someone to get a feel for their common sense attributes. My grades were very high as well. But since I was 24 years old when I started college, I made it my priority.

 

[KENAT]

Additionally, I've had a few complements from folks on the shop floor etc. and I'm not as hands on as many members here.

So while my gut agrees about the whole needing hands on experience etc. my personal experience doesn't necessarily match it.

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[zdas04]

Like many, I'm leery of a CV that only lists academic and social experience. Once you establish that the applicant has done SOMETHING other than school (e.g., military service, Co-Op, some non-retail job, etc.) then I'm willing to talk to him/her and will see good grades as a positive. Without any evidence that a candidate ever worked for a living I get really skeptical (and personally I don't cut any slack for drama club, debate society, etc. I see that stuff as just school without grades). I've had good luck with both vets and Co-op students.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[moltenmetal]

Stereotypes are dangerous, but it's understandable why people use them as a crutch sometimes.

When looking for co-op students, I actually look for kids with very good grades, and I reject kids who have failed a term unless there is some very obvious reason for it immediately evident in their application package. The program is actually quite easy to pass- and difficult to excel in. Good grades show both a high native intelligence and a willingness to work when it is needed, and enough maturity to know when that is, as you can't excel in the program without at least a little of both. I then weed through the kids with good grades for the ones who actually have truly practical intelligence. I do this by asking technical questions which examine their access to a conceptual understanding of their studied subject material, as well as examining how they make assumptions, how they reason, and how well they think on their feet etc. These tests do tend to trip up the purely academic kids who lack commonsense, who are the ones that people who throw out the top 10% of the class are trying to avoid (throwing out some of the cream of the crop in the bargain!) I've found my technique to be extremely effective, especially now that I've had years of experience correlating interview responses with on-the-job performance in our work environment.

By the way, I too had excellent grades- I was always in the top 5-10% of my class, and I wasn't any older than the rest of my classmates. Without blowing my own horn too much, I was smart, unafraid of hard work, and much more serious than most kids my age. I'd also had the good luck to be in a graduating year in my high school which was unusually full of high achievers, and we competed with one another which upped everyone's game quite a bit. I was also fortunate to have an upbringing that gave me very strong hands-on experience to go with it.

 

[SNORGY]

I think, if I had one thing to contribute to new grads or new hires, it would be that you need to be able to:
(1) Think.
(2) Solve a problem so that it goes away.
(3) Understand the consequences of your decisions and solutions to yourself and to other stakeholders.
Me:
To a large extent, I failed at all three, and now live with a lifetime of the consequences. A came out of high school at the absolute top of the class, spent a year in college on the President's Honor Roll, a year in university on the Dean's List, and then I figured, "Great, I've got this, I can be a full-time athlete now and still get great grades.". It turns out, I actually *didn't* "got this", and I managed to stay just above academic probation in my second year of university. That was pretty stupid. Worse, the way to become a competitive athlete with a bright future in my sport would have been to grow another foot taller and take anabolic steroids. Stupid as I was, I wasn't *that* stupid. Anyway, due to the cumulative progression of the complexity of the academic subject material in my last two years, my overall GPA ended up short of acceptance into graduate studies, thus closing the door to an MSc. or PhD. So, there I was, in the recession of 1983, no job, no money, no athletic career, and in my valiant attempt to excel at something in which I was not excellent, I lost the other thing in which I *was* excellent (at least once upon a time). The consequences of that rather stupid decision-making process have included relegation to a career in EPC with the other dumb grunts who were not considered intelligent enough by the operating companies of the world to work for *them*, and a great deal more onerous a task ahead of me if I ever chose to immigrate to countries like, say, the United States, because there are scores of thousands of people just like me there already. In short, I closed a lot of doors on myself.
You don't see these things when you are young, stupid and "living in the moment", and you ultimately pay a price for it. Sure, I've done lots of things, played lots of sports, done well at some cool track meets, dabbled in a professional entertainment production that performed in front of 14,000 people, made some podium placements at agility Nationals and, yes, even in my lowly peon EPC career, achieved a few commendable things; in retrospect, I wouldn't trade them. But, I certainly didn't set myself up for fortune or fame, and it's a little late at this juncture in my life to be calling for a Mulligan.

If I had one message for bright, young Co-Ops, graduates or graduate candidates, it would be to advise them to invest what it takes to keep all of their doors open.

That said, I've never worked with a young person who disappointed me. The kids today are smarter, better, more balanced, more articulate and more mature than I ever was at their age. Training them is both simple and extremely gratifying: all you have to do is show them the target, make them understand what the target would look like close-up, and turn them loose. If your vision is clear, their path will be straight. It's like sighting in a gun - once you do it properly, you seldom miss what you aim at, and often, you surprise yourself with what you can hit and from how far away you can hit it.

 

[ScottyUK]

You can edit them you know...

 

[KevinDeSmet]

I find this thread offensive, but that's cool. I stand firmly behind the old ideas of W. Edwards Deming. The problem is not with the willing workers but with the system. Everybody has to learn and if your company needs to rely on supermen then you don't have a fail-safe system of doing work. You want a wide group of people to apply practical knowledge and know-how? Get into Knowledge-Based Engineering or continue whining!

 

[zdas04]

KevinDeSmet,
Offensive? What about it offends your delicate sensibilities? I certainly didn't see anyone requiring the application of super-human skills. I really would like to know what is offensive.

I have skimmed through the whole thread this morning and it looks like well-meaning, experienced engineers sharing their insights. I don't know who W. Edwards Deming is, but often the problem really is with workers whose expectations are not in line with the requirements of the job. Claiming that some amorphous "system" is at fault is just the blind search for someone else to blame for our shortcomings.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[KevinDeSmet]

I don't know. I guess what offends me was the post about trustworthiness and intelligence and self-motivation. I think a lot of things are 'attributed' to people, when they are not truly intrinisic attributions at all! People can be as motivated as you enable them to be or as unmotivated as you force them to be. And these don't even need to be very extreme things to demotivate!

The simple notion of having to work from 9-to-5, of work needing to be stressful or you're not "working hard enough", the hierarchical divide between managers and workers, seniors and juniors. The idea of 15 years work experience at something as a 'good' thing instead of as the boring reality which by then it will surely have become. People who wanna do finite element analysis get no chances and people who have done it for 15 years are bored of it.

All these things lead to de-motivation!

In my opinion, degrees and in fact even work experience artifically restrain individuals naturally trying things out and gravitating toward which interests them. This directly affects human resources hiring policies which place wrong people in wrong jobs, and this as nothing to do with skill or knowledge, this is intrinsic motivation which every single person can feel for themselves.

This over-arching "system" directly influences the outcome: untrustworthy, uninterested behaviour in workers.

 

[thaidavid40]

I personally had a hard time trying to understand where @KevinDeSmet was coming from in his last response. It felt like he was reading his own frustrations into other people's words. I didn't sense in the string of any of these replies any of the negativities he was complaining about. Maybe it's my age, or maybe it's just me, but he seemed to be coming from way out in left field with those criticisms. I thought that many of the other replies were well thought out, and heartfelt. And I even picked up a few good thoughts along the way. Thanks to everybody who added their thoughts - please keep contributing to eng-tips.com!
Dave

Thaidavid

 

[zdas04]

KevinDeSmet,
And that adds up to "offended"? I have to tell you that your discussion sounded like a spoiled, entitled brat who would fit in very well at Mizzou right now, but I didn't get "offended" out of what you said.


David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[MrHershey]

Don't know about the reasons behind KevinDeSmet's being offended, but can say that some attitudes on this subject that I've seen here and elsewhere have peeved me in the past. A lot of it generational, doesn't make me feel real great as a recently fresh engineering grad when the older, more experienced types complain that new grads don't know how to design anything and don't have any practical knowledge. Actually makes me very grateful for the older, experienced types at my firm who are decidedly NOT like that and have done and continue to do a tremendous job with the younger engineers we hire. But at the same time it makes me upset and disappointed for the younger engineers who have to work for these types. Seems like it would be a depressing work environment and would be difficult to get motivated or develop as an engineer. Can't imagine getting out of college, being really excited to finally go do something with this degree I just paid a bunch of money for and this education that is 20 years in the making. And then end up working for or being managed by someone who thinks I don't know anything.

As I noted above, we've had tremendous luck with new graduates. And maybe it is just luck and we'll have a string of bad young hires here soon to balance things out. But if it's not luck then we must be doing something right, which would imply that the firms and companies having these issues are doing something wrong (or at least have room for improvement). Would probably be a good idea to figure out how to change that, and quick. With the boomers continuing to retire and workforce continuing to get younger, this isn't going to just go away.

 

[zdas04]

MrHershey
I for one never intended to imply that new grads were any different than previous grads. In fact I started my first post in this thread with a reference to the engineers working on the Roman aqueducts complaining about the "kids these days". Reading through other's posts I'm thinking that you are just reading curriculum complaints as complaining about "today's kids". I don't want CAD taught in undergraduate programs. I don't want "film appreciation" to be an acceptable elective. I want a new engineer to be able to set up and solve a 3D kinematics problem. I would like a new ME to know what the ASME codes are and to be able to calculate a gas velocity from a volume flow rate stated in standard units. I don't expect a university to teach her my company's exceptions to the code. It takes time for a new engineer to learn how my company does projects and engineering in general. That is why new hires are rarely productive in the first couple of years. It was true when I started, it was true before WWI, and it is true today.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[MrHershey]

I can appreciate that. Less 'kids these days', more 'kids all days'. And one thing that the more experienced where I work at do a great job with is recognizing that there's things the younger types can teach as well. Usually with technology, but there are other areas as well. One is code changes and sometimes even specific code language, especially for engineers that are studying for exams. The younger generation growing up with the Internet age is used to constant change. They don't know anything else. Codes changing every three years isn't a big deal to them, even when changes are major. And picking up the changes is a lot easier for them since they don't have the backlog of information that the more experienced have. A mix is important and I'll rail against the younger types complaining about the olds set in their ways just as much as the other way around.

And disagree that film appreciation shouldn't be an acceptable elective. One of the major points of college is to produce well rounded individuals and the arts and humanities are vastly important in doing this. Some of my most fulfilling courses in college, the ones that really taught me how to think (and I'm still not that great at it), had nothing to do with engineering.

 

[KevinDeSmet]

Thaidavid40,

Damn straight I'm frustrated! Do you think I'm a frustrated individual? Well, I'm not. Stop attributing things to people as if it's what they are, instead of what they have become due to circumstances. I have become frustrated because of the experiences I have gone through in my short career so far (been working for about 7 years) and one of them is precisely the topic of this thread.

People sizing other people up. Only hiring the "best" young graduates who are 'self-motivated', as if that comes out of a person's butthole, as if planted by magic wizards and leprechauns of the lush green lands of Motivae??!

If you have created a system of universities that are not aligned with the needs of business you only have yourselves to blame. Putting the blame on young people is easy. But you're the ones that fucked shit up to being the way it is today.

Again, I haven't been employed at every company in the world everywhere, so I can't say for all. But certainly I've been at two OEMs so far as well as several SMBs and they all fucked up. Either the hierarchy destroys them, or the lack of resources destroys them, for OEMs and SMBs respectively.

Yeah I'm not a very logical person, more of an emotional type of guy. That's probably why me replies are a bit more "floating with the my feet off the ground" type responses. But hey, I hope I can contribute at least something, even this way. If not then fine I'll shut up. But don't expect me to put on a mask that goes "everything is a-okay, with Kevin!" or "Kevin, loves the business world that has become the reality, today!"

Because no.

 

[thaidavid40]

Regardless of the surrounding, external circumstances, self-motivation (and other, similar, personal characteristics of successful people) is one of the keys to that success. One doesn't absolutely have to like a situation in order to be successful in it. Think about how some people successfully survive natural disasters, when others in like situation don't. None of them liked it - but some of them were motivated to succeed anyway. Competition - for jobs, for food, for life itself - is an innate part of our existence here on earth. Dissatisfaction will not remove that ubiquitous competition from one's life, it will simply make succeeding and thriving under it more difficult - and even more stressful. As my football coach at Furman used to tell us, "Stop complaining, and hit somebody!" It was a bit direct, but it carried a great truth: complaining rarely solved a problem.
Dave

Thaidavid

 

[KevinDeSmet]

I understand your point of view. I'm not condoning complaining, I am condoning finding the root causes behind the issues.

Natural disasters is a different story in my opinion as it climbs down the Maslow's hierarchy tree, which is a very simple model that says that when our basic needs are threatened we will let go of all other worries and ambitions to tend to restoring our basic needs. It's like when you have the flu.

I do not believe in success being possible if you're a regular Joe or Jane living within a system that stiffles innovation. Most of the people who got stuff done in the past (and the present) have not been alone and have worked together in an entire ecosystem to make things happen.

I also do not believe in competition, it assumes a fixed piece pie. Collaboration expands the pie, so everyone wins.

Again these are my beliefs and I hold none of them to be "the" truth, but I have thought about them deeply and won't be shaken easily. Just as I am sure you have yourself about your beliefs. And that's good, otherwise we'd be flip-flopping politicians!

 

[GregLocock]

"Damn straight I'm frustrated! Do you think I'm a frustrated individual? Well, I'm not. "

I'm trying to make sense of that little rant. I suggest you grow up, grow a pair, and put the keyboard down. Nobody is even slightly impressed by your swearing either.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[HamburgerHelper]

Fresh grads are fresh grads. All have varying interest and talents. The biggest problem I have seen is the complete lack any sort of mentoring, both technically and towards career guidance. If I was running a small firm or my own department, I think my first priority would be training and mentoring. It helps with so many things across the board: quality and engagement in the work, general morale, retention, and development of new ideas.

 

[KevinDeSmet]

Greg,

If you don't see it you either 1) live in a better part of the world than me, 2) work at a better company than the ones I have worked at, or 3) have very low standards for best practices and world-class quality.

To the other post, I think small firms that truly know what they're doing, on a worldwide competitive knowledge-base, seem like a really small percentage. Because how could they? You tell me. You need manpower, in numbers, to do truly amazing work. Everybody contributes their skill for the better of the whole. In a small company, say 10 guys just basically screwing around a little, what's that gonna do for the world? Maybe I'm just too cynical...