January / February 2009 newsletter

For those of you engineers still in the formative stages of your careers, take heart! The future looks increasingly bright. According to the American Society for Quality (ASQ), when it comes to kids' dream jobs, engineering is not on the list. An overwhelming 85% of youths say that they are not interested in a future engineering career for a variety of reasons. More and more, manufacturing companies of all industries will be facing a troubling shortage. The top three reasons why kids aren't interested in engineering:

1. Kids don't know much about engineeering (44%).
2. Kids prefer a more exciting career than engineering (30%).
3. They don't feel confident enough in their math or science skills to be good at it (21%).

According to the ASQ survey, the shortage will reach 70,000 by 2010 based on an estimate by the National Science Foundation. They continue to say that this shortage will likely cause less focus on innovation toward quality as well as aging and outdated standards. In addition, knowledge transfer from retiring engineers to incoming engineers will continue to weaken threatening progress, causing an increase infrastructure costs for generations to come. And remember we're always here to talk and to be your career coach. The advice we provide is based on almost 30 years of experience in the industry!