Other Professors, students and careers

[Choppy]

I was reading about something called the dual vocational education and training system in Germany and Switzerland, and it seems that it's a good model for training and selecting employees. Companies have paid apprenticeship programs that teach people technical skills that they can use immediately after they finish, and from those trainees, the company can select some to work with them. These countries have addressed the experience dilemma that most countries suffer from including Canada and US. We have to adapt to the broken system we have, but I think these issues need to be addressed at the same time.

EDIT: sorry I think the initial post came across as a little more snarky than intended.

Canada has had programs like this for years. I believe the same is true in the US.

The trades have apprenticeships programs where people earn as they work.

At the undergraduate university level, co-op programs, allow students to gain paid work experience in their field to compliment their studies. A lot can depend on the co-op model the school uses though. In some cases the employer-university relationship is pretty solid and students more or less have something just as a result of enrolling. In other programs, they have to find the work themselves. Unfortunately I think it's becoming more popular not to pay co-op students for their time. In my opinion this is a backward way of thinking. If the program is set up properly, the student will provide a net benefit to the employer and therefore needs to be reimbursed.

This happens even in my own field of medical physics. Graduates obtain residencies where they gain clinical experience and develop a clinical skill set while working under the supervision of qualified medical physicists.

 

[EngWiPy]

I mentioned this before in another thread, but I will mention it again: I watched once a documentary about the job market, and in it, it was mentioned that there was a study conducted that showed that for every $1 spent on training an employee, the employer gains on average $1.75 in return. The employer never loses in training employees in the long run. The problem is in the mindset of the industry. No on is willing to invest because they want to maximize interests as much as possible. This isn't true in Switzerland, for example; employers are willing to invest.

I'm not sure what co-op programs exactly are, but it seems they are limited to already enrolled students, the same as internships (I'm not sure if they are different). I, for example, cannot do these training.

Although there is an emphasis on being social, I think it's overrated. Being able to communicate, on the hand, is important.

 

[CrysPhys]

...
Although there is an emphasis on being social, I think it's overrated. Being able to communicate, on the hand, is important.

But being social is a mode of communication. To reiterate a point I previously made, the key to effective communication is to know your audience and to tailor the mode of communication to that audience. Writing an IEEE journal article to communicate technical achievements to an audience of your peers won't cut it for selling yourself to an audience of hiring managers (and an audience of connections who can help you reach those hiring managers).