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Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Engineering
They are talking about this topic: General Skills
The quotes below are about this issue:
Employers emphasize that consultation skills are essential for engineers. Engineers must be able to build relationships with clients. This includes listening and communicating their ideas in ways that establish rapport and facilitate agreed-upon solutions. These skills are not necessarily lacking, but employers look for these skills in strong candidates.
| "I'd put an emphasis on the technical skills, but as consultants, we also need the soft skills. So, we're also looking for folks that can be consultants and work in teams; folks who are very team-oriented. We need to sit down and listen to our clients, what they need, what they want, and then translate that into a solution, and be able to communicate that back to meet their needs." | Metro |
| "We need people with consulting soft skills. They need to be able to communicate with interactive teams and with clients. So, maybe the issue would be if people can't operate in that kind of free market system—if they aren't comfortable developing that network internally. But we try to screen for that." | Metro |
| "For entry-level and particularly for our experienced hires, we need leadership skills because of our organizational structure and our consulting services. We need to be able to build relationships, sell the services, and cross-sell the services. So, we need people who can build an internal network across different divisions of the company as well as communicate with the clients. They need to be interested in understanding everything that we do. They need to be able to communicate and bring the right people in. So, having that influence and having those consultation skills are both really important for experienced people and people who want to be able to advance to project management or principal levels." | Metro |
| "Building relationships with the customers is a huge part of it, probably equal to the product that you supply." | Northeast |
| "For our department, we want somebody with technical skills and communication skills to be able to deal with the customers. That can be a struggle at times. I don't know exactly what's being included in the curriculums now. I know when I was at [out-of-state college] we had technical presentation classes that we had to do. I don't know if that's missing now. I'm on the alumni committee there, and they were talking about eliminating that course at one point, and the alumni committee said, 'No, definitely not.' I think it helps prepare students for the real world when they have to deal with people." | Northeast |
| "I like a person who is in the middle-of-the-road, not an introvert or a total extravert, just kind of in the middle where they're good at what they do. But, yet, they can communicate well if they need to talk to customers. You know, people who have the whole package, and we do have quite a few who are like that." | Northwest |
| "And they need to be able to talk to the customer because we also do embedded and custom controls, and you need to talk to people. A lot of times even just the sales people. They have to be able to communicate, and then write it down." | Northwest |
| "I'm involved in a number of professional organizations. And actually for the last number of years, the organizations have definitely favored the graduates coming out of [MnSCU college]." | Southwest |
| "That's how we hire, because we deal very much in the public sector. They have to be able to deal with people, contractors, politicians, whatever." | Southwest |