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!

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Darn straight I'm frustrated! Do you think I'm a frustrated individual? Well, I'm not. [snip] I have become frustrated because of the experiences I have gone through in my short career...

Yeah I'm not a very logical person, more of an emotional type of guy.

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.

I think I see the problem... too much fly-off-the-handle and poor-little-o-me emotion, not enough logical detachment.

Not to mention you may see things a little differently when you're in the position (after years of experience) of hiring folks (who are at the level you're coming from recently) to work on your projects. Hindsight being 20/20 and all of that...

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[KevinDeSmet]

Well excuuuuuse me that I'm not Mister Spock! It's precisely this kind of rock-solid no emotions allowed, that's giving engineering a bad name. You can't bulldoze people into doing whatever it is you want, I don't care if you own a business and need to hire people or not. The matter of fact is all this impression mangement and repression of emotions kills trust. If you don't have trust, everything else falls down sooner--or later. Everything is flawed: money as a motivator, rank and position as a differentiator, etc...

Is skill gaps and experience difference a factor in business? Yes. Is money a factor in business? Yes. But these should not become primary points of focus because they do not go down to the level of intrinsic motivation. What makes people really tick? What makes one person in love with designing machines and the other person thinks they're boring? It's not knowledge nor money related yet of primary importance.

And then you have these "rock-heads" (no offence) that are like: ohhh no, little emotional baby just man up. You guys are everything that is wrong with the situation and in matter of fact, like administrators of the world, perpetuate and police its very continued existence.

*makes a rude Italian hand gesture*

 

[MJB315]

Guys. KevinDeSmet is right.

Our engineering education system is inefficient at creating engineering experts. Yes, successful engineers do make it through the system...but it is usually do the heroic self-motivation of the individual. And that's not a great recipe for success. Hanging our hats on outliers and overachievers is a recipe for decline.

Ask the average engineering graduate to recall his education and apply it practically...and what do you find? (I hear the snickers from across the Eng-Tips readership.) "You really have to work a few years before you can start to understand..." is a common response or reaction. That's crazy!

To think... that a student spends 5% of his or life and $100,000+ on an degree program. Faculty and staff spends a lot of energy as well. And students can't remember and apply what they have learned? So much wasted effort. It's the greatest inefficiency in our society.

There is a way to improve the overall system without overhauling it. Higher education does alot of things right and we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am actually in the beginning stages of a project called Inside the Mind that can improve the system. I will be asking for help from the Eng-Tips community in the coming weeks and months.

But in the meantime, a few points:

1. We need to redefine our engineering education process as a road to expertise. If we can do that, we can help students understand and control their inevitable loss of confidence. Seasoned educators and professionals loose sight of this... but we can't. It's a thing.

Cue the cognitive psychologists. The Dunning-Kruger effect is an idea that compares confidence vs. expertise. The main takeaway is you are never as confident as when you are a novice (read: don't know anything, read: students). We graduate very happy and self-assured students. Which is crazy, because it actually means that they are as far away from expertise as possible.

As soon as students start to realize this (perhaps after working for 2-3 years), they become very bummed out. No one wants their self-esteem balloon deflated... especially when you have already viewed yourself (and been graded in) a positive light. Many will take to learn this decline in confidence and shift away from engineering altogether during this time (many deciding to go to law school, oh Lord). This guts our profession of talent. It wastes the time effort spent getting them there. It's inefficient for everyone.

And while the confidence swing isn't avoidable, it can be identified early and managed. Our education programs should focus on graduating kinda-bummed, but proficient engineers (on the road to expertise) instead of happy ones. No one wants to bum out students but if expertise is the goal (instead of a good grade in individual classes), it's necessary. Besides, it's better to have your world shaken in the class room... instead of when you're paying rent and asking your employer for a raise.

2. We need to expose our students to drawing, drafting and modeling. HAVE TO. Engineering (structural engineering, at least) is 50% communication and a student that comes to me that can assemble a stiffness matrix but cannot communicate a design... is nearly useless. Engineers are no longer analyzers as much as we are tailors and worriers. We are hired to see and create what others cannot and take responsibility for the structure when its done. That vision has be to communicated constantly (both internally in the design office and externally to contractors, owners and municipalities). Communication is a lot of the job.

And it's the one area where a new hire can immediately assist the design team he or she joins -- they can help the team communicate by drawing. Technical writing skills are important too.

The new hire can also help the team worry. Because someone needs to. There are too many things that can go wrong (both in design and construction) that someone needs to be constantly vigilant and keep things on the right side of the line. As engineers, we can't beat a computer in analyzing something (of a known geometry, anyway)... but a computer doesn't worry. I again put a premium on neurosis, consciousness and curiosity of a new hire over their ability to apply the stiffness method to a 6DOF system.

I value the opinion of several of the very experienced engineers here who believe otherwise... but to me, drafting (communicating) and engineering ethics/case studies (worrying) need to be taught to students, IMHO.


So, this is a little long winded-- but I don't think there's a topic in engineering that's more important. I'll update you all on Inside the Mind soon.

In the meantime, please don't attack the young pups for identifying key defects in a system that is supposed to churn out the engineering experts that our world needs. They're right... and tough love along the lines of "suck it up" is unimaginative at best and crippling, at worst.









"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us." -WSC

 

[SNORGY]

KevinDeSmet,

Admittedly it's always a challenge to balance the human side of things with the "rock head" side of things. That said, companies have work to do, the work requires skill sets, people are interviewed and hired or promoted on the basis of having those skill sets - those very people even put whatever strategic spin they can on their qualifications and interests in order to be the one hired or promoted to do the work. So, potential employers are often duped into hiring or promoting the wrong human beings into the wrong life roles, but who then is lying to who?

I usually tell my direct reports that engineering is simple. We put stuff on paper. Other people then change the stuff on the paper by marking it up with red. Eventually, when everything on he paper is black and nothing is red, you sell the paper to someone who pays good money for it. The path from red to black can be as emotional or emotionless as people want it to be, but me, I tend to zone out and look for another job when it becomes more emotional than paper-red-black.

This is why I have spent decades *NOT* pursuing roles in management. I didn't sign on for babysitting, mediating arguments, dealing with tears in my office trying to bring people to some kind of happily-ever-after group hug. Trust has nothing to do with an emotional state of mind. It has everything to do with accuracy, repeatability and predictability. So, to advance my cause, I just try to be the guy that, when the paper is spawned, mine will be the one with the least red on it.

 

[zdas04]

MJB315,
I don't see anyone above "attacking the young pups", just the opposite in many cases. Expectations of experienced engineers in this thread is that out of the gate, new hires never have (and never will) be able to contribute to projects at the level they will be able to contribute after learning the company's internal processes and procedures.

Engineering is about communication and I think that engineers should learn paper and pencil drafting before they ever touch a CAD program. That way they learn to communications part of it and later learn the ALT-CNTL-D portion that is specific to a particular package. An ME who learned Solidworks in lieu of drafting will be at a major disadvantage going into Oil & Gas because the CAD we use tends to be AutoCAD. That is my problem with teaching CAD, you are not learning drafting principles you are learning how to tickle a particular robot.

You've put pretty words around the OLD saw "hire teenagers while they still know everything". If you think that your Inside the Mind paper/book/whatever is going to make that saw any less true or more manageable, then good luck to you. If you think you can protect the delicate young darlings from the vagaries of life then you are dreaming. I'm not going to let a poor design stand to keep from telling an idiot he's an idiot (or telling someone that they might have missed a key element in their considerations). If I sugar coat it, then they will make the same mistake next time. If I throw it in their face and make them find the fault, then they will remember. It is way better for all to stop protecting their feelings.

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]

MJB, very interesting I think Total Quality Management from Edwards Deming can work well in an education setting as well, there are a few Youtube videos that gloss over the main ideas there.

SNORGY, I understand your point of view. But I see quality as a process that includes at its core motivation and learning. Continuous development is something every individual desires in life and thus also work. If you only hire people who have all the required skills from the very beginning this seems to run counter to that. For that applicant there is nothing to gain other than make a new employer happy with a "least amount of red" required on his work, as you so put it.

I don't like babysitting either but in the end, I think there is no other way. We are not born with any knowledge but we are born with intrinsic motivation, and people experience roadblocks like necessary degree's or x-years of experience trying out things they intrinisically know they might like and enjoy--and become good at, mind you! It is a direct consequence of liking something, you're bound to have a nack for it.

Organismic valuing is the idea behind that. Every individual will gravitate towards a position where he feels instrinically most comfortable and most empowered, most useful and likely to find individuals with similar motivations and points of view on work, and life.

I know it's a bit fluffy but...I think it makes sense on a deep level.

Zdas,

You're the idiot for not capturing corporate knowledge and practising a best-in-class knowledge management philosophy using tools such as knowledge-based engineering. You honestly don't think the old ways of knowledge being in every person's head is achievable in an ever more complex world developing ever more complicated products? Even simple products are not self-evident apart from to the person who knows how it works! I have seen this many times, some engineer guy says to me "dude, it's not rocket science?" and I'm like inside my mind going like "well, doesn't matter, if I don't know then I don't know."

 

[thaidavid40]

Part of the difficulty here is that most young people come into engineering schools - and then into the profession - without ever having built anything. When I was in school, I already had experience digging ditches, installing water and sewer pipes, paving roads, stringing fencing, erecting small buildings, etc. And quite a number of my school mates had similar experiences - many of them had also spent some of their teen years being around construction, and actually seeing how things go together in the field (i.e.: the "real world", as some would say). I think that too many of our entering college freshmen lack any practical understanding of the simplest of construction practices. If more of them would take summer high-school internships at construction companies, and do Co-Oping during college, they would be materially better off to handle both the office demands on their abilities, and the practical expectations made of them.
My two cents' worth -
Dave

Thaidavid

 

[zdas04]

KevinDeSmet,
If that is what you got out of my post, then I really don't think that we are ever going to communicate. We don't seem to be on the same planet let alone the same profession. I'll leave the last word to you.

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]

Fair enough, don't mind me, remember: I'm frustrated. I don't like it, I don't pride myself on it but I am. And I can not deny it, or ain't going to, either.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Well excuuuuuse me that I'm not Mister Spock! It's precisely this kind of rock-solid no emotions allowed, that's giving engineering a bad name.

And then you have these "rock-heads" (no offence) that are like: ohhh no, little emotional baby just man up. You guys are everything that is wrong with the situation and in matter of fact, like administrators of the world, perpetuate and police its very continued existence.

*makes a rude Italian hand gesture*

And you prove my point so eloquently.

You seem incapable of thinking logically about the situation and continually fall back on the "Woh is me!" principle. Nowhere has anyone (myself included) suggested removing emotion completely, only understanding how overt emotion can muddy the issue to the point of failure to see the forest for the trees. If this is the type over over-reaction you display to your work colleagues, it would come as no big shock to most here that they frown upon your antics in general. In short, you likely are the cause of your own poor situation. A member of my team who shows such a lack of control would only be given a short period of time to get it under control before being removed... it would wear thinly on the others and everyone has their own demons to deal with, they don't need yours.

You can't bulldoze people into doing whatever it is you want, I don't care if you own a business and need to hire people or not. The matter of fact is all this impression mangement and repression of emotions kills trust. If you don't have trust, everything else falls down sooner--or later. Everything is flawed: money as a motivator, rank and position as a differentiator, etc...

Is skill gaps and experience difference a factor in business? Yes. Is money a factor in business? Yes. But these should not become primary points of focus because they do not go down to the level of intrinsic motivation. What makes people really tick? What makes one person in love with designing machines and the other person thinks they're boring? It's not knowledge nor money related yet of primary importance.

Your intrinsic motivator is irrelevant when I need a job done. Your whining about me not meeting your intrinsic motivator falls on deaf ears. I need a skillset and a certain minimum of experience... if you don't fit that set of requirements, you are relegated to lower-level projects until such time as you do meet those requirements.

I have/show respect for people who work hard and get the job done. I pay them (hopefully) what they are worth in the current marketplace. But you have somehow forgotten that it's a job. If you walk away at the end of every day and feel like you have made a difference, that's great, and I'll make reasonable allowances to ensure that continues. But if you think a company exists just so you can take home a paycheck every week and feel good about yourself, your sense of reality is entirely too warped to make it long-term anywhere. No one is there to hold your hand, and no one is there as a shoulder to cry on when you don't feel loved... everyone is to ensure the success of the company they work for, which means they get to take home a paycheck the following week, too.

And rank is a differentiator. That's the entire purpose of it. The person at the top has a handle on a project as a whole, the people below continually split the work up into finer and finer detail until it hits the granularity necessary for actual work to get done. The low-level folks don't have the experience to see the project as a whole, and the high-level people have experience that is too valuable to waste their time doing low-level work. This is exactly why fresh grads do basic work and experienced people manage those same fresh grads. You seem to be under the impression that rank is a conspiracy to keep people such as yourself at the bottom... if you can't grasp the real reason why rank exists, exactly as I've just written, then you will always remain at the bottom levels and you will always have a chip on your shoulder.

I would have thought 7 years experience would have taught you some of this, but I can see you're fast on the path to becoming an experienced malcontent.... it's us against "the man", as it were. People with blinders on are near impossible to help, so I'm done trying with you.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[KevinDeSmet]

You're a scary person, man.

 

[MJB315]

Zdas,
Far from wanting to protect "...the delicate young darlings from the vagaries of life...", I want their ears boxed as early as possible. But I want to do it in a way that shows them (the paying student) that it's necessary step on the road to expertise. Not because they are stupid, or need motivation. The false sense of competence cannot live past the undergraduate level, like it does now. So I'm with you when you want to call a spade, a spade.

So, this thread took a bit of turn. But it's representative of the conflict that I see play out everywhere.

People generally want to feel a sense of pride and to feel like they are moving forward.

It's true-- when you are starting out, it's hard to feel either without a good mentor. The example that KevinDeSmart shares when he says, "...Some engineer guy says to me "dude, it's not rocket science?" and I'm like inside my mind going like "well, doesn't matter, if I don't know then I don't know." is not a good mentor.

How can you feel like you're moving forward if you don't know what forward necessarily looks like? What does a successful late-career engineer look like? That's not always clear to a young engineer.

How can you feel a sense of pride when you're made to feel inadequate? I don't advocate lying about competence... ever. But "Dude, it's not rocket science" doesn't help. Calling someone an idiot, doesn't either.


On the flip side:

MacGyverS2000: "Your intrinsic motivator is irrelevant when I need a job done." Is a pretty darned good point. Senior engineers have a hard enough time meeting client expectations and getting out a safe and technically sound product on budget and on time ... it doesn't leave a lot of time for emotional counseling.

Disillusioned engineers don't produce quality work. Employers can't pay someone $30/hour to dream about a better life. I've been on both sides.

Everyone agrees that there's a problem. So I'm curious:

From the more experienced side of the aisle:
[ul]
[li]What does success as a professional engineer look like?[/li]
[li]What does being an engineering expert feel like?[/li]
[li]How is your mind organized?[/li]
[li]How do you remember everything that you've been through and learned?[/li]
[li]How does your ideal mid-career (10-years experience +/-) engineer view the discipline?[/li]
[li]How does your ideal entry-level engineer view the discipline? [/li]
[/ul]

For those starting out or in the middle of their careers:
[ul]
[li]What do you want out of your career?[/li]
[li]How much of your education do you remember?[/li]
[li]How well have you been mentored? [/li]
[li]How fast are you moving forward? [/li]
[/ul]


Let's start walking in this direction, and see where we end up.

"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us." -WSC

 

[zdas04]

MJB315,
As I was reading your post the thought finally flashed into my mind "If there was a recipe for engineering competence or career success some programmer would package it into an algorithm and we could close all the engineering schools". I can make some deep pontification that gets 50 little purple stars (my personal motivator) and it will reveal a "truth" that applies to dozens of people around the world. Someone will take the opposite position and also get 50 LPS and that will reveal a "truth" to several dozen others. This has happened many times on eng-tips.com.

I've seen some very successful engineers that are never not thinking about their work (I see one in the mirror every time I shave, bless my wife of 43 years for tolerating it). I've also seen successful engineers that have hobbies, friends, and seem to be able to turn their minds away from the last engineering problem that they were thinking about. I really can't say that either end of that spectrum will be more successful that the other end.

I'm going to assume that by "professional engineer" you mean "an engineer who has reached a level of competence normally called professional" rather than a "registered professional engineer", I am both (at least I think I meet the first first hurdle and have a piece of paper attesting to the second) and the questions become trivial if I took the second definition.

[ul]
[li]What does success as a professional engineer look like? That is an amazingly personal answer. For me as a corporate employee, it was job titles and extra assignments (I was a Facilities Engineer for an Oil & Gas asset, but was also a member of several advisory boards and was the technical authority for a half dozen subjects). For me as a business owner it is the challenge of the assignments--no one pays my hourly rate for an easy problem so I get really-tough/impossible assignments. Finding solutions or work-arounds for the hard stuff is very satisfying.[/li]
[li]What does being an engineering expert feel like? It feels like me. I don't have a word for how I feel. It is not the same as any of the other successes in my life (raising kids, having grandkids that like to spend time with me, etc).[/li]
[li]How is your mind organized? My wife is quite artistic and I picture her mind as a Mac desktop. I picture mine as a Windows file system. I think the biggest reason that I've been able to accomplish the things I've accomplished is an ability to relate facts that seem to be very unrelated. You can read about some of these leaps in the Samples page on my web site.[/li]
[li]How do you remember everything that you've been through and learned? You don't. I went to Graduate School after 12 years out of undergraduate and there was never a day went by in grad school that I didn't think "I can remember having known that". I don't think I've ever forgotten having known something (but how do you tell?), but reacquiring the forgotten details can be as painful as the first time.[/li]
[li]How does your ideal mid-career (10-years experience +/-) engineer view the discipline? As a learning experience. When I thought I "knew it all" about my job, I went next door and filled in as a Measurement Engineer. When that seemed old, I took a job evaluating reserves. I found that in mid-career you need to always be looking over the fence at the rest of the picture. I sat in the same chair, with the same job description for the first 10 years of my career and did 2 dozen different jobs on top of the one I was assigned. The engineers that were focused on "mastering" a single job title always found themselves dissatisfied when the field moved beyond them. I never had the experience.[/li]
[li]How does your ideal entry-level engineer view the discipline? As a world too large to consume in a single sitting. I teach a 5-day class trying to impart the stuff I wish I had known when I started out. Typically each class is a mixture from new hires to 20 year guys. The entry-level engineer that I want to see is asking questions about every section. The people I don't want to see are the ones working in gas compression who sleep through reservoirs, drilling, and downhole operations then perk up when I talk about wellsite facilities and get excited when I cover gas compression, and then go back to sleep for water disposal. Specialization is for insects and in my experience successful engineers are not insects.[/li]
[/ul]

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

 

[MJB315]

Well, (1) LPS from me. (49) to go!

"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us." -WSC

 

[IRstuff]

I think that it's short sighted and illogical to imagine that 4 yrs of college could possibly provide with EVERY possible scenario and design problem you could possibly encounter in the first years of one's career.

> That presupposes that everything that you get in school is what you wind up doing. I know that's not at all true in my case. When I graduated, I thought I had a career path laid out in IC design, of which I've actually done nearly zero. So, any in depth education in IC design would have gone completely to waste.

> There's absolutely no guarantee that what your 18-yr brain thought when it declared your major will actually stay enamored with its choice 30 yrs down the road

> It also presupposes that everything you're taught is the end-all and be-all. If that were possible, that would mean that there will no new problems to be solved, and that would be a boring world.

Instead, you should be given the ability to know how to learn and how to extrapolate your skills into new arenas. I get new problems every year, things that I wasn't even close to learning in college. But, I can extrapolate and apply my learning skills to get up to speed on things I've never done before. Few of us have predestined lives and careers, and that's the way it should be.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529

 

[TheTick]

One thing the best manufacturing departments and the worst design departments have in common is a religious adherence to Deming.

 

[KevinDeSmet]

TheTick,

What's wrong with the Deming approach for design departments?

 

[TheTick]

In theory, nothing. In practice, it seems to be a favorite of managers that prefer to reduce their employees to ciphers. Hardly a productive approach for a creative environment.

 

[morgwreck243]

MJB315,

From someone in mid-career (coming up on 10 years):

For those starting out or in the middle of their careers:
•What do you want out of your career?
Ultimately, to be the fixer. A lead expert within soils & water.
•How much of your education do you remember?
Some of it. I've started working on my master's degree this year so I'm recalling a bit more than I was before I started with the classes. One class at a time and online (teleconferences & skyping with classmates about the homework.
•How well have you been mentored?
Almost non-existant with my current company. My first job out of undergrad I was working directly for a PE at a highway design company. Since I've been working with my current company I have had little to no guidance for the engineering side of my job. My boss is a great resource & help for understanding the business-side. I have also been on the road on field assignments for most of the past 6 years so I have little personal contact with the local ASCE chapters or other professional associations.
•How fast are you moving forward?
It feels non-existant. For the first 3 years with my current company I was picking up a lot from the field assignments, especially since I had very little background on the environmental remediation side. All of my previous work had been with highway and site design (parking layouts, waterlines, etc.) nothing to do with soil contamination, asbestos abatement and such. I've been frustrated for this last year and that has been building for sometime. Mainly it boils down to the corporate structure of the company. I'm not working in the same office location as the engineering group (which is in the main office). I've asked for help and insight before (ie ASTs, USTs, and SPCC-related items) on items they had experience on, but received no reply (I used both e-mail and phone). I've finally decided to move on from the company and I'm looking at how other companies could fill this void (ie is there a senior engineer that I can talk with?). This is also one of the reasons that I have started my masters degree.

--morgwreck243

 

[aap2]

I think and know first hand that the problem these days is not whether a student is a C student or A student but rather when the credit, "expires". I have found that C students can excel just as good as A students if not better. Degrees have become subjective and there is a lot of bias out there about where you went to college. Some of the bias being rooted from sports which is to put it nicely BS.