Editorial: From New Hire to Rockstar: Closing the Gap

What do you remember about starting your first job? Perhaps you remember the excitement of meeting new coworkers and learning all about your unit, plant, or process. Maybe you remember being nervous — wanting to prove your worth to the team or being afraid to make a mistake.

If you work with new hires today, you may frequently ask yourself, “Was I ever this green?” Chemical engineers fresh out of school typically require at least a year to get up to speed when it comes to job responsibilities — and this gap represents a cost to employers.

The gap in question is “a disconnect between acquired and necessary skills that arises from the disparity between the ways students are taught and socialized and how they are required to function in industry,” writes R. Russell Rhinehart (Emeritus, Oklahoma State Univ.). Rhinehart’s article on pp. 51–56 discusses this gap between education and industry and highlights strategies that educators, universities, and employers are implementing in an effort to close it.

Interestingly, Rhinehart’s article does not cite any specific technical skills that new graduates are lacking. Instead, the article points to underdeveloped soft skills (e.g., the ability to communicate and function in teams), an inability to self-learn and question institutional knowledge, and an overall cultural divide that make new graduates ineffective in the workplace.

Rhinehart’s viewpoint reflects my personal experience. One of the most difficult lessons that I had to learn when interning and later starting my first full-time position was effective communication. For example, if my manager gave me a task that I wasn’t sure I could finish in the allotted time, it was often difficult for me to voice my concerns or share progress updates because I worried that I wouldn’t live up to expectations.

In school, we were taught to finish our assignments to the best of our abilities and submit our work by the deadline. Whether or not that work was complete and done well dictated our grade. I brought that mindset with me to my first internship, which certainly caused me some trouble back in the day. Today, I expect all members of my team to submit completed work of the highest quality; if for some reason a deadline won’t be met, I expect that team member to communicate the problem well in advance. In the workplace, partial work does not merit partial credit — it merits a performance improvement plan. I have a feeling that my younger self would not have met the high expectations that I place on my team every day.

For me personally, interning was one of the most valuable experiences in acclimating to the workplace and preparing for future full-time employment. Learning how to network in a professional manner with colleagues, navigate the intricacies of workplace politics, and meet the logistical rigors of a 40-hour work week simply can’t be taught in school.

If you are a hiring manager in industry who would like new engineers to be a bit more up to speed, the best course of action may be to advocate for an internship program in your department. If that’s not possible, Rhinehart’s article discusses a few dozen additional tactics to close the gap that hinge on developing relationships with nearby universities. Flip to page 51 to read more.

Emily Petruzzelli, Editor-in-Chief