This time of year the Co-op Office is approached by a number of upcoming graduating students from every engineering department asking if they can help them find a job since they didn't pursue an internship or co-op before graduating. The following piece from the American Society of Engineering Education helps put into perspective the continued importance of work experience prior to graduation.
The structured industry experiences that have CoE oversight (registered in Co-op/Internship Programs) are often taken much more seriously by employers because the evaluation and documentation required. Co-op have increased their scrutiny of the job requirements to qualify for credit in recent quarters in response to input from faculty and advisers to ensure that registered work experiences are engineering related. In those departments that accept Co-op credit to fulfill requirements within the major, faculty may evaluate the work experience.
There are a number of employers seeking students for this coming summer, so please encourage your students to view our site and apply for jobs: http://www.engr.washington.edu/curr_students/coop/index.html
Employers seeking students (current postings on eRecruiting):
Elektrobit
EMC
Genie
Hexcel
NVIDIA
Philips
Sage Bionetworks
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard
WatchGuard
From the American Society for Engineering Education:
Internships Play Increasing Role In Future Employment.
Under the headline "Interns Get A Head Start In Competition For Jobs," the Wall Street Journal (5/16, Light, Subscription Publication) reports that more and more entry-level positions are being filled by people who formerly interned with the companies advertising the openings. According to a recent survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the percentage has risen from 30% in 2005 to 40% last year. At some companies that number is even higher, although experts say in some cases the percentage is skewed by slower overall hiring. Still, they add, the finding emphasizes the growing importance of internships to students' post-education job prospects.
The Record (NJ) (5/15, Macinnes) reported NACE "last month reported that responding companies converted, on average, nearly 58 percent of their interns into full-time hires, up from two years ago, when businesses converted 53 percent of their internships." And while the job outlook is brightening, competition remains fierce, which is leading some students to begin "their internships and work experience earlier - forgoing vacation plans even as early as freshman year."
A related article in the Evansville (IN) Courier & Press (5/16, Langhorne), on the 2011 Job Outlook Spring Update from the NACE, reported the association found "that 174 of its employer members indicate they plan to hire an average of 19.3 percent more graduates this year than they did last year," and that the ratio of applications to job openings has fallen from last year by roughly half. "Employers are, as always, keenly interested in hiring graduates with technical majors," the article noted. Gene Wells, director of Career Services at the University of Evansville, said that internships were important even for in-demand majors such as engineering. "One of the things about engineering and business and in health sciences, is that you're working toward your career aspirations essentially from the beginning," he explained.
