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recruiting
Oct. 2nd, 2022 03:15 pmThis 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.
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.