So you wrote an excellent offer and emailed it to 80 graduating seniors through our list server and didn't get a single response? You say you went to several career fairs and no one showed up?

Believe me it's not you, and it's not your company. It's not your industry, nor your specialty, nor your location, nor your starting salary, nor ...

The fact is we graduate about 80 Civil Engineers a semester, and we get hundreds of emails from companies, some wanting to hire 1 student, and some wanting to hire 1000. Literally.

"Dr. Rosowsky,
We are planning a visit to the Texas A&M campus this fall. As the Department Head I hope you may assist us in getting our message out to your Department Chairs and faculty. While on campus, we would like to discuss career opportunities with your graduating civil engineering students along with information regarding career development, locations of district offices, rotation programs, and current vacancies. We are aggressively recruiting to fill over 1000 positions for our department, with the majority (400) in the Transportation Engineer (Civil) classification. Last fiscal year we hired over 400 Transportation Engineers, (Civil), and will hire over 400 more this year also."

"Dr. Lowery,
It was a pleasure to meet with you today. I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me. Per our conversation, we are trying to hire 600 engineers for our North America Operation. We have openings in design, field and research. I would appreciate it if you could help spread the word about our upcoming informational on Monday."

Obviously the ratio of available jobs to candidates is extremely high.

So what's the answer? In the long run, probably the best way to increase your chance of finding a good match for your company is through an internship, or a co-op program. The students are particularly interested in summer internships. It gives them exposure to practical engineering as well as experience. It lets them look you over; it lets you look them over.

One company has had great success by opening a branch office here in town, rotating their engineering staff into the office, and hiring part-time students to do as much of the work as practical. That's obviously quite a commitment just to hire an Aggie, but they currently have three students working at the office and are very pleased with the results when the students graduate.

Otherwise I would say just keep sending us emails. We will gladly keep posting them to the students until someone really wanting to do public works in Snook sees your announcement.

If you would like to discuss any of this please contact me.

Lee L. Lowery, Jr., PhD, P.E.
Professor / Research Engineer
Texas A&M University
Zachry Department of Civil Engineering
College Station, Texas 77843-3136
email to: Lowery@tamu.edu
Phone: 979-845-4395
Fax:     979-845-3410