CPACE Primary Research: Draft Employer Interview Protocol

Technology

Demographics

Introduction

Talent

Draft Employer Interview Protocol-1

Employer Name:

Interviewee Name:

Interviewee Job Title/Position:

Employer type: Please choose one.

What's the zip code for this location: ____________________

What is the total size of your company? Please choose one.

What is the estimated annual revenue of this location? ________

What industry is your firm part of? Please check any that apply.

What type of work does your firm specialize in? Please choose one.

Which of the following best describes the market of this location? Please choose one.

How many engineers does your company employ? We are defining an engineer as someone who holds at least a four-year degree in engineering. ________

How many engineering technicians does your company employ at this location? We are defining an engineering technician as someone who has at least an associate / two-year degree in engineering technology. _________

What is your company's current hiring demand for the following types of entry-level engineering employees? Please check High, Medium, Low, or NA for each category.

Does your company project notable changes in hiring demand for any of these entry-level positions in the next three to five years? Please check Increase, Decrease, or NA for each category.

What are your current educational requirements for these entry-level positions? Please check level of education for each category. HS= High School Diploma; AA=Associates; BS=Bachelors of Science

For entry-level engineering technicians, do you anticipate the educational requirements changing in the next be three to five years? To what level? Please check level of education for each category. HS= High School Diploma; AA=Associates; BS=Bachelors of Science

What are the core engineering-related jobs in your business? These aren't necessarily the jobs where you have the most openings - although they might be - but the ones where vacancies or skill gaps really hit your bottom line?

Do you have difficulty filling entry-level engineering-related job openings that are filled with new 2 year or 4 year grads?

Is your company moving away or towards entry level engineers or a certain type of entry level talent?

Besides formal education, what other qualifications are you looking for in applicants for your entry-level engineering-related positions?

How important are computational skills for these particular positions?

Please rate the college graduates you have hired in terms of the following computational skills (5 Excellent - 1 Poor)

When you hire a new grad, when it comes to computational skills, which statement best applies to your typical experience?

Up until now, we've been talking about your current hiring trends and practices. Looking three to five years out, what entry-level engineering-related positions do you think will be in most demand by your company?

In what ways does your organization provide information about computational skill requirements to college and universities?

What are the effects of technology on your company and your industry?

Specific Technologies

What are the types software that your entry level engineers use on a regular basis?

Of the software you listed above, which 2 or 3 are the most mission-critical or important to your company? We recognize that email and Excel might be really important to getting the job done, but what we're most interested in are the ones that are crucial to your company's competitive advantage in the marketplace.

For the 2 or 3 programs you mentioned, how do engineers use this software in your company?

How has this software changed the nature of engineering work for your company's engineers?

How do entry-level employees learn to use these programs/software?

What are the prerequisite skills that employees need to use these?

How do new engineers learn to use these programs/software?

Looking into the future, are there new software programs and technologies that you expect will become important to your business? (Things that are currently considered cutting edge, but that will become critical to getting your work done.) If so, what are they, and how do you anticipate those changing the computational skills you expect from your entry-level employees?

In what ways do any of the software programs used by your engineering and technical staff encapsulate or capture the engineering and design knowledge of your company?

CPACE - An NSF CPATH Project‎ > ‎Advisory Board Members Home Page‎ > ‎Advisory Board Meetings‎ > ‎Advisory Board Meeting April 24, 2008‎ > ‎CPACE Data Collection Strategy Overview‎ > ‎

Goal is to have both an HR and Engineering Manager involved in the interview, if the company is large enough to have both.
This will allow each to answer questions that the other may not have enough information to answer.

(This information is intended to be filled out by the interviewee before the interview via a web-based survey tool)

Academic ________
Government ________
Private sector_______

Small (5-199 Full Time Employees) _____

Medium (200-999 Full Time Employees) ____

Large (1000-6999 Full Time Employees) ____

Huge (7,000 or more Full Time Employees) ____

Aerospace _____
Agriculture/foods _____
Alternative energy _____
Bio-based products _____
Bio-medical _____
Chemical ______
Civil _____
Computer/software _____
Construction _____
Electrical _____
Electronics, except computer ______
Environmental _____
Health and safety _____
Industrial _____
Marine/naval ______
Mechanical ______
Mining and geological _____
Nuclear ______
Petroleum ______
Work environment _____

Design ____
R&D____
Manufacturing ____
Construction _____
Other (please specify) _______________________________________________________________________

local ___
state ___
multi-state ___
national ___
international ___

The occupations below correspond to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational classifications. For our purposes, we are defining an engineer as someone who holds at least a 4 year degree in engineering, and an engineering technician as someone who holds at least an associate/two-year degree in engineering technology. We recognize that some companies use the term engineer more broadly, but we would ask you to keep these definitions in mind for your answer. For each of the occupations I listed, please indicate if your firm employs workers in that occupation, and if so, how many total employees you have in that occupation at all levels.

Engineering Managers	Yes No	## _____
Civil Engineers	Yes No	## _____
Computer Hardware Engineers	Yes No	## _____
Electrical Engineers	Yes No	## _____
Chemical Engineers	Yes No	## _____
Mechanical Engineers	Yes No	## _____
Civil Engineering Technicians	Yes No	## _____
Electrical Engineering Technicians	Yes No	## _____
Mechanical Engineering Technicians	Yes No	## _____
Manufacturing Engineering Technicians	Yes No	## _____
Industrial Manufacturing Engineering Technicians	Yes No	## _____

The next sets of questions are about your organization's demand for entry-level engineering employees. When we talk about entry-level jobs, we are specifically interested in jobs where you are are hiring newly graduated applicants, either at the 4-year or 2-year level, not jobs that require education and previous work experience. We would like you to respond for each category of entry-level engineering job. (Note to interviewer - list only those they've said they employ in previous question.)

High (More open jobs than applicants); Medium (Jobs roughly equal to applicants); Low (Lots of qualified applicants for few jobs); NA (Do not hire)

Job Categories	High	Med	Low	NA
Civil Engineers
Computer Hardware Engineers
Electrical Engineers
Chemical Engineers
Mechanical Engineers
Civil Engineering Technicians
Electrical Engineering Technicians
Mechanical Engineering Technicians
Manufacturing Engineering Technicians
Industrial Manufacturing Engineering Technicians

Job Categories	Increase	Decrease	NA
Civil Engineers
Computer Hardware Engineers
Electrical Engineers
Chemical Engineers
Mechanical Engineers
Civil Engineering Technicians
Electrical Engineering Technicians
Mechanical Engineering Technicians
Manufacturing Engineering Technicians
Industrial Manufacturing Engineering Technicians

Discussion on 4/9 to block out the options that are not applicable

Job Categories	HS	AA Degree	Some College	BS Degree	More than BS	Other
Civil Engineers
Computer Hardware Engineers
Electrical Engineers
Mechanical Engineers
Chemical Engineers
Civil Engineering Technicians
Electrical Engineering Technicians
Mechanical Engineering Technicians
Manufacturing Engineering Technicians
Industrial Manufacturing Engineering Technicians

Discussion on 4/9 to block out the options that are not applicable

(Note - The interview questions will be sent to the interviewee(s) ahead of time to help the prepare for the interview)

Good morning/afternoon. ((Interviewer Script))

The CPACE project is a partnership with Michigan State University (MSU), Lansing Community College (LCC) and the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW). The project's goal is to design and implement a process to create a collaboratively-defined undergraduate computing education within the engineering and technology fields that is in alignment with the computational problem-solving abilities needed to transform mid-Michigan's economy and workforce.

Before we get started, I want to just quickly go over the goals of this interview. We are reaching out to companies to learn more about the skills they need from newly graduated engineers and engineering technicians. In particular, we are focusing on computational skills. By computation skills we mean using computers to analyze, design, model or make decisions as part of the engineering practice. For a number of the questions I'll ask today, I'll be asking you to think about your needs 3-5 years out. This is because we are collecting data to use in redesigning curriculum, which is a long-term process.

As indicated when we set the interview up, we expect this interview to take around 45 minutes to complete. I'm going to start off by asking some general questions about your company and its engineering jobs. Then I'll ask you some more specific questions about the kinds of technologies your engineering workers use. Do you have any questions before we begin?

(Note to interviewer - review demographic question and ask for clarity at this point if needed.)

For what type of engineering positions?
For what type of technician positions?
What do you perceive as the problem?

How do computational skills compare with other qualifications?
How do you determine whether applicants have these computational skills at the necessary levels?

	Expect and can find	Expect but can't find	Prefer but can develop	Prefer but difficult to develop	Don't need	Other
Ability to understand when and why to use the computational programs
Capacity to readily use and apply the computational operations using the programs/tools your firm most uses
Ability to innovate and think beyond computational operations of the programs/tools your firm most uses

How will the qualifications for these jobs differ from those of the jobs currently in demand?

We participate on education & training advisory committees
We participate in curriculum development
We participate in job shadowing & mentoring programs
We participate in internships/co-op opportunities for students.
No participation
Other, please explain.

How are you being impacted by new technology?
Can you give specific examples of new technology that is changing your industry?
How do you anticipate technology changes affecting the computational skills you will need in your workforce in the future?

Interviewer instructions: Present interviewee with a paper copy of the list of categories below and ask them to list software used by categories, letting them select the category in which they list the software. Reference example list if interviewee is uncertain about a particular category.

Engineering Specific Technology Categories	What is the actual software being used?	Check if named as one of the top 2-3 most important pieces of software.
Analytical or scientific software
Compiler and decompiler software
Computer aided design CAD software
Computer aided manufacturing CAM software
Data base user interface and query software
Development environment software
Enterprise resource planning ERP software
Industrial control software
Map creation software
Object or component oriented development software
Program testing software
General Technology Categories
Document management software
Financial analysis software
Graphics or photo imaging software
Information retrieval or search software
Internet browser software
Inventory management software
Materials requirements planning logistics and supply chain software
Requirements analysis and system architecture software
Operating system software
Pattern design software
General Purpose Software
Presentation software
Project management software
Accounting software
Microsoft Office suite software
Spreadsheet software
Time accounting software
Video creation and editing software
Electronic mail software
Desktop publishing software

What are the engineering tasks that the software supports?
Do all levels of engineers use the software?
How do entry-level engineers use the software?

What does the software enable engineers to do that they cannot do without using the software?
About what percentage of the work-week would you estimate is spent using these programs/software?

Job Categories

AA Degree

Some College

BS Degree

More than BS

Civil Engineering Technicians

Electrical Engineering Technicians

Mechanical Engineering Technicians

Manufacturing Engineering Technicians

Industrial Manufacturing Engineering Technicians

For example, software may not only be used by individual engineers to design components, but may consolidate and merge these designs into a larger project and may support the collection of bids from vendors.
What knowledge or skills do your engineers need to have to leverage these tools?

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