What should be expected of a new engineer? 6

[spongebob007]

This summer we hired a guy right out of college. The ink on his diploma is barely dry. I was assigned to be his mentor, and frankly the guy is driving me nuts. Sometimes I wonder how he managed to make it through engineering school. He does not have any projects of his own. I am the "project engineer" and I assign him subtasks from my projects. I have kept it as simple as possible, giving him mostly engineering change orders to process. I also have given him some very simple CAD modeling tasks to do since he has no real experience with any 3D modeling packages. The thing that frustrates me is that I have to show him how to do these things a half dozen times, and he still doesn't get it. I have tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but we are going on three months here and he still doesn't seem to be with the program. A task I could do in ten minutes takes him two days. It's frustrating because we are facing real deadlines and he's just dicking around, and after having things explained to him multiple times, he still seems to have no clue what he is doing. I can show him exactly how to do something, and literally ten minutes later he will ask me how to do it again.

This is my first real mentoring experience and I don't quite know how to handle it. I haven't said anything to my supervisor yet because I really am trying to give this kid the benefit of the doubt, but after three months, I think he should be able to at least process an engineering change notice. It seems like nothing sinks in and he is as clueless as the day he walked in. So are my expectations unrealistic or is this kid maybe not cut out for the job? How should I handle the situation? I was thinking about taking him aside and having a face to face before going to the boss. Good idea or no? What should I do?

 

[TheTick]

Some people are impervious to mentoring.

Set down some concrete objectives for him to learn (processes, design practices) along with the task assignments. Quiz him frequently, get him to answer your questions.

If he needs CAD training, get him real CAD training. Otherwise, he will just booger up your hard won collection of good CAD files.

 

[ash9144]

Definitely talk to him directly first. I've had some good and bad mentoring experiences. The hard part as a mentor is trying to understand what their mind set is and where there interests and skills are. My last mentoring experience was with a female eng right out of school and she seemed about the same as what you describe. After talking to her I realized that the plant environment wasn't somewhere she wanted to be. So I got her to do more of the paperwork, accounting, and mundane items until she left. Not really what I'd call successful but at least she was doing something helpful and staying out of the way.

 

[SomptingGuy]

Been there myself. Or so I thought.

I've had to beat the same thing into the same new grad over and over again. More than once. And then do their job for them (letting them take the credit).

Each of them has moved on to good things. Some left, some stayed. Some even thanked me for what they learned.

It's on-the-job training.


- Steve

 

[MadMango]

After 3 months, I think it is a bit late to talk with the employee as suggested (bad on your part). Was he hired on with a 90-day probationary period? Sometimes you have to call a duck and duck, cut your losses and find a new hire.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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[KENAT]

Ha, one I think I'm qualified to answer, though I'm not sure I have much of use to say.

We have a lot of interns, typically every 6 months we get a new batch. My department usually gets 2-3. Most of our interns have not finished their studies yet and are also from Europe rather than USA. One of my tasks is to mentor them, I used to spend more time on it than I get to now but still…

Some are really good and get up and running in a couple of month, self starters etc, a pleasure to be around and I wish we could hire, even in lieu of some of our permanent employees. We’ve had some that after maybe 2 – 3 months are more productive than people that have been doing this for 10+ years.

Others are awful. Reasons for being awful vary. For some of them, given the fact English isn’t their native tongue this is part of the problem – those with stronger language skills tend to do better. For others it’s similar to your problem, you explain something to them several time then they either still do it wrong or come and ask you again. Others still suffer from what they are being asked to do not being something their courses really covered.

Drawing and related documentation skills are something we tend to have them do a lot of. While most of them will have had some kind of CAD training it is usually of a very basic level and concentrating on what CAD can do not what they should do with it. Certainly they have little understanding of actual ‘drawing’ or ‘detailing’ including both general comprehension of Tolerancing and actual GD&T. They usually don’t have much understanding of the documentation process etc generally. Basically, rightly or wrongly, it seems they don’t get taught a lot of the more applied, though basic, stuff at uni (this seems even more true of our few US interns than our European ones).

Some of them also have a problem doing drafting type tasks. They think they should be doing hard core number crunching (which I know some members here would agree with) and/or developing the next wave of technology, leading their own design tasks etc.

Finally, being that this is just an internship, and in a relatively exotic part of the world compared to where they come from, some of them are more interested in partying and going on day trips than working. (I have to say though, the best 3-4 interns we had were also among those that partied hardest and/or went sight seeing the most.)

As well as the 2 above extremes we have some in the middle who do Okay but aren’t exceptional.

So as Tick mentioned, does he need some more formalized training on your CAD package? This will not solve all the problems as it will again probably teach him what the CAD can do more than what he should do with it but it builds a foundation for you to then build on.

We’ve also overtime increased the structure of what we teach them etc, having a list of things they need to learn can help both sides.

I don’t know about your ECO process but at both my employers this could be fairly demanding so depending how simple an ECO or your ECO process is you may be expecting a little much. I certainly messed my first significant ECO up a little, and had it not been for the help of a more senior guy checking it/(informally) mentoring in me it would have been worse.

There can also be cultural issues, and I don’t mean just because in our case they are from a different country, but also due to generational differences etc.

After 3 months I normally have a feel for how they’ll end up, although we currently have 2 interns who’ve been here a bit longer, just over a year and I may have misjudged. Initially I wasn’t impressed by their performance, they seemed slow to get going and had the attitude that what they were doing was beneath them, one more than the over. However, overtime they’ve improved significantly and while still not at the top of my list of interns, they are probably in the top category rather than middle and certainly not bottom.

One thing to make sure is are you really telling him things 6 times or it just seems like it? We had one intern that I really struggled with. He worked really hard but just seemed to need things explained 5 times, I think a lot of it was language and some was his personality, he was Bosnian and had grown up during the troubles there and I think this had affected him, he was very nervous/uncertain. I regret to say that it got to a point where I wasn’t as patient or tolerant as I could have been and was rather short with him a few times, however part of this was perception more than reality, he probably wasn’t as bad as he seemed.

By all means I think having a review with him is a good idea, my manager routinely has review with our interns to track their progress etc. He also uses it as an opportunity to point out areas for improvement. Maybe you could tell your guy that your time is valuable so when he asks a question and you make time to answer it he needs to take notes and make sure he understood correctly by verifying what he understood etc.

Final point in my excessively long post, does he actually seem to work hard or goof off a lot?


KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[ChemEng84]

I think I could give the other point of view which is the intern's as I currently participate in a graduate program as an intern.
First being a mentor means having great communication with the intern so I recommend giving him a detailed schedule of what he should have learned and be doing by like on year. Also you should talk to him about him not being as good as he should – but not in a hard way so as not to depress make him lose his self confidence-
Second try to make him work a little to get the information, rather than telling him what to do tell him where to look in to know how to do (suggest a book or a standard to read) after all easy come easy go.
At last make him attend meetings a lot, this will teach him without interfering with your work.

 

[zdas04]

Get him a notebook. Every time you give him an assignment make sure he writes down the task, any specific instructions, the location of the proceedures, and the due date. When you help him with some task, make sure that he's taking notes. Next time he asks the same thing, have him read back the notes he took the first time. It only takes a few times of someone not being able to find their notes or finding that their notes are worthless to get them to either do better or give up and see if the shoe store is hiring.

It really is a self esteem thing. If someone has a documentation requirement and botches it, their self image often drives them to do better. If not, then their desire to do good will drive them away from a job they lack the skills/interest to persue.

David

 

[carnage1]

I was a mechanical engineering tech before going back to school and at the time had no mechanical engineering classes to draw from, so I was in a worse position than he is.
It sounds to me like he doesn't understand how important other peoples time is.
If he is just making the same mistakes and constantly asking to be babied through everything he does then he may just not get it. I would let him know that he is not living up to reasonable expectations and tell him improvement is necessary. The problem I see with handing him a notebook or a plan and saying "do this" is that he needs to realize that he is supposed to contribute to the company and he needs to find a way to do so without expecting all his solutions to be fed to him.

Luck is a difficult thing to verify and therefore should be tested often. - Me

 

[Ussuri]

Is he trying or just dicking about as you say? Some people take more time to learn things than others. If you can tell the bloke is actually trying quite hard, has the determination and seems like he wants to learn it may be that he is just a slow learner.

If he pays no attention, fools around in the office and lacks any professional attributes then thats different. Even a fresh grad should act professionaly even if their technical skills are still developing.

As a young professional he needs to be made aware of the commercial pressures. It may be that while he is trying, a project with tight deadlines is not the best place for him to learn. You could discuss it with your supervisor about getting him allocated to another, less urgent project.

Another thing, is that the combination of deadlines and guiding a newbie are putting you under additional pressure such that your expectation of their ability is too high and you have a low threshold of tolerance for people who need their hands held.

If he is trying and making an effort I would see about getting hime moved onto something with a gentler deadline, freeing you up to do your job.

If he is just dicking about, treating it as a laugh and making you do everything without putting anything in himself, then he is likely a liability. Lose him.

 

[DesignerGuy16]

Sink or swim comes to mind. After 3 months if you throw him in the deep end sounds like he's gonna sink like a rock. Sometimes people just don't get it. My last job me and another young engineer came on about the same time and within 3 months we were already juggling multiple small projects and supporting the larger ones. At the same time there was an older guy hired to do the same work as me and he just never got it. After he was let go I had to take over his 2 very large projects and get them ready for their final release (which was me basically redoing all of his work from scratch).

I even learned 3d modeling in those 3 months and was already as efficient as most of the other guys in the group.

I really think anyone with a decent skill set and intelligence can do most any job, but a lot still hinges on how motivated they are to learn. You really can't teach someone to be a self-starter.

James Spisich
Design Engineer, CSWP

 

[ajack1]

“Sometimes I wonder how he managed to make it through engineering school.”

Well I guess the fact he did must prove he has the ability to take things onboard at least to that level. You also go on to say “A task I could do in ten minutes takes him two days.” And “I can show him exactly how to do something, and literally ten minutes later he will ask me how to do it again.” This says to me that he is not understanding what you are telling him, that may be his fault or it may be yours.

As you say this is the first time you have mentored anyone I would assume it is fair to say this is a learning curve for you as well as him, you get good and bad mentors just as you get good and bad pupils. It is easy to assume that someone fresh out of school knows a little less than you, in reality they know a LOT less and the whole experience of life in the real world can be very daunting.

Maybe a better approach would be to take a great deal of time clearly explaining every little detail and be sure he understands what you are saying rather than just saying he does, to take two hours to do a ten minute task that clearly is not the case at the minute.

 

[SomptingGuy]

One thing I found really annoying to start with and then quite interesting was teaching a new graduate how I solve problems. I've taken it a stage further now and tell customers how I've diagnosed and solved their problem.


- Steve

 

[MadMango]

As zdas04 said, get him a notebook (if you're going to keep him) and make sure he takes notes. Explain to him about your time constraints, and how taking notes is not only important for "this task" but will be an invaluable habit to form that will help his future career. You make even have to prompt him, "Write this down..."

If you are anything like me, you hate to repeat yourself when explaining things. Hopefully this will not be your last mentoring exercise. Save yourself some future heartache by taking notes yourself. The things you are repeating can probably be turned into some hand out for people new to your department, perhaps even becoming a standard training document. I created one at my last company, called it the FNG Pamphlet. New hires really appreciated it, commenting on how they liked being able to refer to it to find their answers instead of disturbing others.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of these Forums?

 

[KENAT]

As I mentioned above, having the employee take notes, and confirming he has a reasonable understanding of what you've told him is usually invaluable. One way to confirm he's understood can be to ask him to write a memo or email stating what he's going to do, not always appropriate but can be a usefull technique - also gives him practice defining tasks etc.

Do your new hires get any formal training? For example a short session on how your ECO process works, or how to work with your companies drawing/CAD templates or what procedures, standards etc you have.

I'm just coming to the end of giving such training sessions for our new batch of interns. There obviously isn't the time to teach them everything but give them a basic foundation and direct them to resources (such as company prodecures/standards) that can give them more answers.

This is someting we've gradually expanded, not sure how well it's going to work yet but we just don't have the time for each intern mentor/supervisor to spend hours with their interns, or alternatively spend a lot of time fixing their errors if they do it wrong.



KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[PhilBW]

If this is the first person you have ever mentored, I wouldn't be too quick to put all the blame on him. At one job, I didn't have a formal mentor, but there was one engineer I needed to ask a lot of questions because of his area of expertise. He did a horrible job of explaining things, and asking questions didn't help much.

If things don't get better, I would suggest talking to your boss about having someone else mentor the new hire for awhile. If there are still problems, it may be time to get rid of him. However, having a different mentor may make all the difference in the world. My kids have all refused to let me help them with their math or physics homework. Even though I think I do a great job explaining it, I evidently have trouble explaining it on their level.

Phil

Phil

 

[spongebob007]

Formal training, you are kidding right? I have been at this company just shy of two years and the only formal training I have ever had is ethics and security training. However we do document everything so there are work instructions for things like filling out ECO forms. We have access to self-paced CAD training.

I am also not the only one who is noticing this issue. The way our projects work is that we typically have a multi-disciplined engineering team that is led by a Systems Engineer. Well this morning before I got to work apparently the Systems Engineer chewed out our new guy for doing something wrong twice. I went to talk to him and he is pretty pissed off that things are falling behind. His exact words were: "I don't have time to be a babysitter at the expense of my project".

We are not talking about difficult work here. This particular project is simply a repackaging of an existing project, so many of the CAD models he needs are already done. Also, we don't do drawings, that's what draftsmen are for. What he needs to do for this project are simple layout sketches that show the new arrangement with some key dimensions and labels for the individual parts. This project should easily be handled by one person with minimal experience. No calculations required and very little design or original thought required either.

I like the suggestion of having him write down what he is supposed to do and send it to me. I also like the idea of having him keep a notebook. I am also going to have a talk with him so we start on the same page. I think for his sake (and a bit for mine as well) formalizing the mentoring process might help him learn faster. He is extremely lucky that I am not a dick. Many people would have either let him hang himself or rat him out to the boss. I will not elevate the issue to that level, and I asked the Systems Engineer not to either. I am not going to make him look bad, especially in front of the boss. That would be a rotten thing to do. He is also extremely fortunate that I am in a lull with my tasks right now. I spend an avearge of 2-3 days worth of my time per week directly mentoring him. That simply can't go on forever.

 

[KENAT]

spongebob- I pretty much had to fight to be allowed to give the training. And although I say formal training It's actually just me; a pretty lame powerpoint presentation I throw together a couple of hours before the session, a demo of the software when applicable and a few bad jokes.

Formalizing your 'mentoring' may help you measure more objectively how well he does. Also can you get visibility to how much of the self paced training he's done? I think ours even has tests that supervisors can see scores of and records time spent on it etc.

The fact someone else has noticed it though is evidence that it's not just you imagining it.

Your suggested approach sounds reasonable to me.

Out of interest is there any cut off point where you have to decide to keep or fire him? I've often seen this at 6 months. If there is bear this in mind, if he genuinely is a poor employee then better to get rid of him in this trial period.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[HgTX]

He's not this guy, is he?

thread765-223553

Hg


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[cedarbluffranch]

I was a new engineer once. And my boss wanted to fire me because he was nit-picky and constantly found mistakes in my work.

My suggestion is to be patient, and if you run out, see if there is another person who can mentor him.

It sounds to me that you are having him revise drawings, correct? Remember that drawings, CAD, and modeling is not taught in engineering school. Prior to working with you, he had no experience in GD&T (if you use it) or drawings or engineering change notices or anything like that.

Keep in mind that your company probably has a lot of unwritten procedures, policies, and methods of doing things. He is trying to learn how to do all of this very quickly and very little of it is written down in a format that is easy for him to use.

Keep in mind that the new engineer is used to solving problems from a textbook. Give him a stress calculation on a beam, and I'll bet you he will have a great answer. Ask him to figure out the best way to control the perpendicularity of a threaded shank to a nearby rivet, he'll probably be clueless. He will learn.

You also sound like a person who is micromanaging work rather than someone who is hands-off with management. I think new engineers that are overmanaged are bound to fail. They need time to become acquainted with your systems.

Remember he doesn't know the history of your company, your group, or your processes. Pretend that you wake up and don't remember a thing that happened before. Could you get fully up to speed in less than 3 months? Depending on the complexity of your company, that may be a tough job.