Raise your own engineers
Jon Titus, Editorial Director -- Test & Measurement World, 9/1/2001
The next time your company needs to hire an engineer, why not start a greenhouse and raise your own? Producing beautiful and valuable plants takes time, care, and investment, and so does "raising" engineers. Companies must understand that when they raise their own engineers over time, they gain loyal employees who develop the skills and levels of critical thinking they need. No, you can't actually grow engineers, but you can start them on the right path through part-time, apprentice, and work-study programs.
Unfortunately, when the economy cools, those types of programs often get cut first. In effect, companies eat their seed corn. You can't set up a program to bring people into your company and nurture them, only to cut the program when times get difficult. Yes, running an apprentice or work-study program costs money, but in the long run it produces tangible benefits. The key to success is having the fortitude to continue such programs when money is scarce.
Several years ago, Tom Malott, then the president and CEO of Siemens Energy & Automation said, "Apprentice-trained workers achieved a 42% productivity increase and 70% fewer product defects than their untrained counterparts for a savings of $458,000. Not bad for a training investment of $30,000." Granted, Malott spoke about production workers, not engineers, but his meaning is clear. Raising the people you want to work for your company pays off.
When I ran a small business, my colleagues and I hired a fellow who worked with us as a part-time technician while attending engineering school. After the young man graduated and found a full-time job, he thanked us for providing so much on-the-job training. Just through day-to-day work he learned a great deal of practical electronics as he designed simple circuits, built and tested prototypes, and wrote assembly-language code.
I don't think he realized just how much he had learned until he compared himself to recent grads who hadn't had his experience. At the time, we didn't realize we were supplementing his education. He had shown real interest in what we gave him to do, so we increased his responsibilities to the point where he was doing real engineering. I'm sorry we didn't have a place for this new engineer on our small staff. Without any additional training, he would have fit right in, and he would have started engineering right away.
After a few job changes, our young friend started his own company. I haven't spoken with him in a few years, but I bet right now he's nurturing his own crop of homegrown engineers.
