Our department has these newsletters where they highlight the awesome stuff some of our alum go on to. It makes us feel good that we’re doing something, and makes students want to flock to us because they think we’re great at placing students in high-paying, fun jobs. However, this has set a false standard for students. They are coming in thinking employers will flock to them, it will be easy to get a job, they’ll have enough money to buy their dream car, and they’ll be doing some novel work at their dream job straight out of college. Truthfully, maybe 5% of the students from each graduating class are getting jobs like this. There aren’t as many of these types of positions in industry, and students are just not prepared for the ‘real world’. On the engineering side, coming out with a BS or sometimes even an MS, the majority of students go into QE, process, new product development, systems, or testing engineering. From talking with them, the majority of students would prefer to go into early feasibility engineering (some say they want to go into business or marketing….kids….): coming up with new ideas, building new prototypes, testing them themselves, and getting their devices into some sick patient’s body. Luckily, I had early mentors that prepared me very well for the few unicorn-jobs that are out there.
Aside from that, the students are coming out with skill-sets and knowledge that aren’t conducive to highly challenging careers where you need to balance work ethic and knowledge to get your foot in the door. I do three things in preparing undergrads: 1. Bring in industry people looking for good students, 2. Prepare students for the types of jobs that are out there and what they would qualify for, and 3. Teach them the skills they need to get in the door and be successful. I want our newsletter to be inundated with students doing incredible stuff, and not just have to highlight specific grads because it’s all we could get.
Prep point 1: I was talking to two grad students from the same undergrad program and they complained that there were only a few employers from the medical side of things at their career fairs at their top-5 undergrad institute. Here, we have a dozen employers looking for good students right now. The exposure is key. Students learn about the company, the company learns about the students, and the biomedical internships have increased 10x since I joined a few years ago. So I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done here. And this was easy because I know exactly who to call to get them to come to the career fairs. Prep points 2 and 3: Students need a dash of reality. In every industry, we need paper-pusher scientists. And if you want something more stable from a work-life balance perspective, I’ve noticed these are pretty damn regular. Good pay, good home life, but lacking in creativity. In addition, some students just aren’t talented enough. I’ve done a good job of fostering more applied skills so at least students will have that experience if they haven’t done so hot in thermodynamics, so students are placing into jobs more easily, but it’s still not where I’d like. The median was 1 month after graduation that students have found a job by before I started, and it’s 2 months before now. The economy is also doing well, so that may be a factor, but I feel way better about the recent crop of students than the first when I came in. And half have gotten medical jobs via advertisers at the career fairs here. I’m pretty proud of that.
Overall, contacts matter so much in finding work and I tried to bring as much of that as possible in combination with teaching students the skills they need. Next to one specific project I have, this is definitely one of my favorite projects.
academic infiltration 
This is really interesting… any tips on how to figure out who to contact if you’re a career academic with no industry experience? I work in a field that doesn’t *really* have any industry component, but several of our previous students have been successful getting jobs in data science / medical imaging just using the skills they have from undergrad or else by doing a few-month boot camp. I am always delighted when my students go on to these sorts of positions, but I feel a bit helpless when it comes to assisting them in finding these positions. How do I make those connections without working in industry myself? For now I just pass my current students along to my former students (which gets easier as my base of former students grows), but I’d like to work on building more ties with other interested companies that haven’t already placed a student of mine.
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So I might not be in the best place to answer this since I came in with all the contacts. But I did notice a few things when I was in industry and had been a part of partnerships not created by me. There are a few conferences that are well-attended by both academics and industry alike. In the medical field, these are typically physician-based since physicians and their collaborators are from academia, but the companies that want to sell the docs therapies are obviously from industry. So these are the times I would end up getting approached by academics. Right now, this is also how I create new partnerships in fields I don’t have contact with. One thing I learned very well in industry was how to network like a boss. Ultimately though, I don’t get the students the jobs (usually), I just have the contacts to get the companies recruiting out of my school for their more high-profile positions. And I don’t stake my reputation directly unless the student clearly stands out.
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