Hiring and Retaining Engineers
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E-recruitment
Application submissions to Kettering Univ. had flat-lined. When the school became the first in the U.S. to use the Internet as a recruitment tool, the payoff was a 60% application jump from the fall 1999 semester to the fall 2000 semester.
"We were usually flat between one recruiting time and the next recruiting time," said Julie Ulseth, Director of Marketing for the Office of Enrollment Management for Kettering Univ., a co-op institution in Flint, MI, providing students education in engineering, applied sciences, mathematics, and business management.
 Kettering Univ.'s personalized website is aimed at attracting tomorrow's students. |
When a prospective student visits www.getreal.kettering.edu, a personalized web page reveals a click-and-drag puzzle to solve as well as information about Kettering. "This is truly a nontraditional way to reach (college-bound) students," said Ulseth. The initial high school student contact path includes either the receipt of a postcard via U.S. mail inviting the student to visit his or her personalized website or the receipt of an e-mail with a hyper-link to his or her personalized website.
While Kettering Univ.'s breakthrough recruiting method intends to captivate students enough to prompt application submissions, companies are also using electronic technology for recruitment reasons. Delphi Automotive Systems has about 25,000 resumes (as of November 2000) in an electronic database predominantly accessed by the company's human resources department staff.
"We don't have to go to Hungary or Russia to recruit for a position that we need to fill in the U.S. because we have various search tools to fill those positions locally," said Luli Montagano, Director of Global Staffing and Recruiting for Delphi Automotive Systems. One key advantage of the database is it enables the company to customize hiring searches as reports can be generated to sort resumes by specific information/criteria. Resumes remain in the database indefinitely. Job seekers can enter a resume into the database via the Delphi website (using the career tab at www.delphiauto.com).
Delphi Automotive System's three dominant engineering disciplines are mechanical, electrical, and industrial, with a growing demand for information technology/software personnel. "We employ 16,000 engineers, scientists, and technicians worldwide," said Montagano.
Global exposure via the Internet has provided an engineering services company contact with overseas candidates. "Since we are actively looking to add over 300 engineers in the next year, we are increasingly using the Internet as a recruiting tool," said Chuck Wintz, Marketing Director for EDS-Applied Engineering Solutions in Troy, MI. The company, presently employing more than 450 engineers in the U.S., has netted interest from job candidates in Australia, the Middle East, and Europe.
"We also have come across more overseas candidates through our traditional on-campus recruiting. There are more overseas engineering students with student visas than in the past. We have had the opportunity to interview many of these people," said Wintz. Online and traditional recruitment tactics are measured in terms of successful job placements. "These factors (Internet and on-campus recruitment) have helped our organization. It has given us the opportunity to add very talented people from technically rich environments," Wintz said.
Elementary- and middle-school-age engineers
The number of university students pursuing engineering and science disciplines continues to drop by the thousands every year in North America. Put in simple terms, interest in math and sciences among students dwindles with age.
"There are a number of programs - like 'A World In Motion' - that go in the right direction to encourage students to pursue engineering careers, but there's probably not one thing that's going to solve the supply/demand issue," said Robert Oswald, Chairman, President, and CEO of the Robert Bosch Corp. in North America.
"A World In Motion," an SAE International Foundation initiative, is a curriculum companion for teachers emphasizing math and sciences with hands-on activities targeted at grades 4 through 6 as well as separate challenges for higher grades.
For instance, the program designed to appeal to 8th graders is A World In Motion II/ Challenge 3. The project enables students to take an active role in an engineering design experience. Materials for Challenge 3 were developed by the Newton, MA-based Education Development Center, Inc. with guidance from the National Science Foundation and numerous educational curriculum specialists. Challenge 3 begins with students receiving a letter from the editor of the fictitious publishing company Mobility Press, Inc. inviting submissions for a book.
Students then go through a real-life activity that involves a beginning-to-end process of building a glider toy. The engineering design experience covers eight weeks of work that addresses setting goals, building knowledge, designing/building/testing product, finalizing the model, and presenting the finished product. Challenge 3 also ties in participation from classroom volunteers who share professional experiences in areas such as science, math, marketing, oral communications, and consumer research. The teacher's kit for Challenge 3 contains a teacher's manual, videos, and posters. A classroom materials kit contains 15 model gliders, 36 sheets of Styrofoam, 36 balsa sticks, four meter sticks, two glue guns, modeling clay, and rubber bands.
Lively interaction with students is also the approach taken by an inspirational speaker who stresses that anything is possible if dreams and action are part of the equation. Rico Racosky, author of "dreams + actions = reality," a registered trademark, has talked in hundreds of elementary, junior high, and high school classrooms over the past 10 years, encouraging students to live their dreams. "When kids see the connection between academics making their dreams come true it can change their outlook because they find a meaning for learning," said Racosky, a commercial airline pilot.
Racosky's book helps youngsters pinpoint goals and develop follow-through via a step-by-step guide. His book accents an individual's path of discovery using text, photographs, artwork, charts, diagrams, and hands-on activities. In addition to the 138-page book, Racosky also outlines more than 40 suggestions in a handout covering six topic areas: projects, games, creations, teamwork, research, and critical thinking skills. As the author points out, all future successes begin with a dream and actions. "There is a school of thought that by 2010, 50% of those jobs haven't even been invented yet. So that's the invention of today's third graders," Racosky said.
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