Comparison of Student and Practitioner Viewpoints Relative to First Employment Opportunities for Architectural Engineering Students

For more than $23\text{years}$ , I have been the faculty member responsible for placement coordination in the Department of Architectural Engineering at Penn State working with students in the structural, mechanical, lighting∕electrical, and construction management disciplines to develop academic-practitioner partnerships related to recruiting. This activity included full-time and summer-job placement initiatives and implementation of an annual career fair, which for a number of recent years has included participation not only by students from Penn State, but also AE students from North Carolina A&T State University and Tennessee State University. Many of the items discussed below are representative of these placement-related experiences.

Background information contained in this editorial includes formal and informal conversations with firms seeking to employ AE students, discussions with individual recruiters and human resource individuals, the results of student assignments in professional practice and career development, follow-up conversations with past graduates, and feedback from general placement activities such as recruiting meetings, mailings, and exit interviews. While the experience discussed above has been somewhat limited to the program at Penn State, I believe that this experience is not unique and represents to a strong degree the situation at most, if not all, of the AE schools. And, while a scientific study was not conducted, the viewpoint expressed below is somewhat more widespread in that many of the companies recruiting at Penn State over the past twenty plus years have also recruited at many of the other AE or AE-related programs in the country.

For the student, evaluation of employment opportunities begins with some form of self-evaluation. Each student must have a clear picture of his or her own long- and short-range goals. Their career goals are very important in the process of evaluating a first employment opportunity. If the student either does not fully understand or appreciate their own requirements for a successful future, then they will never be able to recognize and evaluate the path of opportunities in the complex network of a modern company. Employment activities should not be approached by the student or the employer from the viewpoint of finding the perfect candidate or the ideal firm. Most likely neither exists, and simply obtaining a good match has worked well historically for both the student and the employer.

There are guidelines that have been developed over the years for recruiting and employment-opportunity evaluation that are fairly general in nature and can be used by students in a variety of different disciplines. These evaluation categories provide guidance for the student in the selection process and at the same time provide firms employing AE students with some factors to consider in their own self-evaluation of what kind of work place and business climate they are developing. Penn State AE has even experimented with formal rating and ranking systems in conjunction with criteria such as that listed above, but has found that the first employment decision is such a personal and emotional one for many students that when the final decision was made, a numerical point system was often not reflective of the student’s selection. Careful research and thought relative to individual goals and expectations matched with the traits of individual companies appears to be the best overall approach for students to follow.

Any job-search process at some point involves direct contact in the form of resumes and interviews. The placement process is usually considered successful if students receive offers from the employers that interest them. Throughout the years, as part of the various feedback mechanisms incorporated in the placement process, over 30 different categories of criteria have been listed by students as desirable characteristics of a first full-time employer. And while the order of importance changes from year to year due to the personalities and backgrounds of the class as well as various perceptions of the job market, seven items have emerged as the primary perspective of what the students are looking for in an employer. These items are listed below with no particular ranking intended:Employers are reminded that while this list is generally at the top of the student criteria, many other factors were also listed by individual students. The lesson for recruiters is that they need to listen and be flexible during the interview and hiring process to be sure that they cover the factors that are important to each individual. Failure to cover or explain an item that is important to an individual student can lead to the loss of a valuable long-term resource for the company.

If you ask 20 companies this question, you will most likely get an extremely wide variety of answers. The responses are often specific to the company needs at that particular point in time or that support a current initiative of the firm. Over time, however, a pattern of responses to this question has developed that is fairly independent of the size and type of firm (AE, consulting, construction, manufacturer, etc.). This list has also been limited to the most frequent responses. The complete list is much longer and varied, as one might expect when dealing with a variety of companies from all over the country. The qualifications the companies are looking for in a student are as noted below:As a check on what companies do compared to what they say the students were also asked, based on their interview experiences, what items they felt were stressed by the companies. A virtually identical list developed, but the students had an overwhelming perception that the top criteria of the employers were finding students who had quality summer jobs or internships in the field. Much of this reaction was based on a perception of why certain students were selected for interviews, especially early in the recruiting season.

Individual experiences relative to the placement process vary widely for both the students and the companies involved. However, the responses and trends noted in this editorial are believed to be a good starting point for review by all those who participate in this process. As a part of the ongoing request for educational papers and forums for the Journal of Architectural Engineering, I encourage academic institutions and industry practitioners to submit forum discussions related to the needs of entry-level engineers. Submissions relative to a variety of topics including recruitment, placement, formal internship programs, educational outcomes, and the professional development aspects of AE education or industry training are encouraged.