recruiting

[spacefem]

This time of year we're all running around to college campuses, it's career fair season. I actually loved the idea of pandemic "virtual" career fairs, where students could all sign up for 5 minutes online with me and I didn't have to shout across a gymnasium full of crowd noise. but I never got all my 5 minute spots filled either. it's easier to get noticed if you are at a physical booth and all the students see their friends dressed up in business casual walking in groups to an EVENT so they go too, and they stop at the shiny tables and come get a keychain. oh well. rip my voice.

the biggest challenge I have is that I am supposed to recruit entry level engineers to my team that's a nice mix of engineers and mechanics supporting airplanes in the field, but new engineers do not want to support airplanes in the field. they're new, they have a DEGREE, they want to DESIGN AIRPLANES.

which is a lovely idea and I want them all to pursue their hopes and dreams, but I did the "my name is on drawings" thing and, well, support is more fun and a lot more educational. it moves so FAST, and you learn about what so many parts do, and you travel and talk to wonderful people and you're part of life! no meetings where I'm trapped for an hour trying to convince everybody my wire bundle should go through a spot where a hydraulics engineer wanted to put a tube. no projects worked for months and then put into file drawers because it's not the 1 out of 20 or so ideas that make it to the real world.

everybody loves the computer world, the story of the xerox PARC, and I'm the pesky one reminding them that the xerox engineers didn't get to see their ideas get produced. they planted seeds. that's nice.

I like learning about stuff that's already made and figuring out how to tell people stories and metaphors and new ways to troubleshoot and little improvements, I feel like I'm so much more technical now than I ever did when I was in the design world, setting up parts lists making sure I had the right number of connectors called out.

I guess every new grad has to learn this for him/her self. in the mean time, they do not want to intern in my world. darn.

Comments

[spiffikins]

I can't recall if I felt the same way when I was new and shiny - but I can *totally* see that now?

In our software world - if you are fixing bugs, you will end up touching and learning about the *entire* application. Whereas if you are designing and writing some brand new feature - before you have worked on the application - you don't have any understanding of how other parts of the application work, and what functions are already available to you. You may write good code - but it may not "fit" with the rest of the product - and maintaining your Speshul Code is going to be annoying to everyone else :D

Supporting existing stuff - is the quickest way to learn What Works In Real Life - and gives you far more experience in a short amount of time, than going out with your newly minted degree and trying to convince people with 20 years experience, that you know what you're doing, LOL.

[adafrog]

:)

[msconduct]

They want to design planes as their *first* job? Does that ever actually happen? I would've thought just being around planes first and getting to know them in the field would be a non-skippable step if you want to design them.

[ironphoenix]

I got lucky, quite a bit of stuff I designed is Out In The Real World. I think the design side gets more prestige and money, but the whole thing has to work together. I don't think less of the folks in manufacturing, test, maintenance, etc.

[acidtrips]

i am commenting here just because i added you a while back, and my ADHD got the best of me and i never commented! i just added you because i think we would get along really well. you're welcome to snoop around my blog a bit and see if you'd like to be friends on here. if not, no worries at all! just let me know so i can do right by you and delete you off my friends list! wishing you all the happiness, love, and light no matter what ♥