Engineering Studies

Welcome to Your New Job

The hierarchy is broken, technology is disruptive, and now Gen Z demands a new covenant. At first glance it’s scary, but at second glance it’s a major opportunity. Now the ball is in the hands of academia, which will train engineers and mainly teach them how to learn. Engineering studies must adapt to these new realities to prepare students for the changing job market.

The changes to the industry are numerous and far-reaching: Transition to a hybrid work model; a generation of workers who aren’t afraid to switch jobs frequently; and technologies that require new skills and displace existing professions. As a result, the traditional hierarchy in some organizations is broken. Those who can adapt and not merely view the change as a chaotic threat will identify major opportunities.

Redefining Skills in Engineering Education

“COVID, at least in technological environments, has accelerated the idea of sectional work,” says Dr. Hila Chalutz Ben-Gal, a senior lecturer at the School of Industrial Engineering and Management at Afeka – the Academic College of Engineer in Tel Aviv. “If there is a clear division of labor based on skills – characterization, code development, UX design, QA – then you can do it from any place at any time, and also take on a variety of projects and prioritize tasks. This, together with the generational-cultural aspect and the disruptive innovation that pushes out old technologies in favor of new ones, has changed the rules at organizations.”

So how to operate in the new job market? Dr. Chalutz Ben-Gal suggests for organizations to apply product development practices to resource management as well. “In the automotive industry, for example, there’s a product kit – you build a product tree, which guides the various stages of the project. This idea can be translated to the job market, creating a marketplace of skills. Disassemble and reassemble, like Legos or a puzzle. Which kit do I need for a specific project in a specific environment?” She proposes a new approach: rather than manage human capital in terms of a person’s fitness for the needs of a specific job (person-job fit) or organization (person-organization fit), look for a person-skill fit: meeting the skills required by a given project at a given time.

This isn’t semantics, but a profound change in perception by both employers and job seekers. “This will affect how organizations’ most important resource – human capital – is managed. The bots that scan CVs will have to be trained for fittingness. My vision is a sort of Waze for the job market – a technological system that plots the shortest and most effective route to the goal, in terms of the skills to acquire and the decision points to pass. Want to be a product VP within a decade? Here’s your route, whether you work at a startup, a corporation, or freelance.” For skills, Dr. Chalutz Ben-Gal also includes soft skills, or as she likes to call them, hidden skills. For example, critical thinking, risk-taking, and teamwork, all of which have become critical in the age of interdisciplinarity.

Transforming Academia for the Future of Engineering

Dr. Chalutz Ben-Gal suggests three directions: 

1. Purpose-built trainings divided into skill-based clusters – jobs must hone vital skills, which is why degrees should be based on job-essential skills. “At Afeka, we’ve carried out a broad initiative to map out the skills and define the ideal figure of the alumnus, and adapted the curricula accordingly. It’s an ongoing process.”
2. Understanding that the younger generation cares less about titles and more about experience. “A work portfolio or a project you’ve created with your own two hands is just as relevant and important, and perhaps more so, than another accreditation on your CV.”
3. “Effective learning accompanied by technological platforms and artificial intelligence, and backed with as much practice as possible. Our students no longer want to sit passively in class, and righty so. Learning must be backed by the experience of repeatedly applying job-critical skills and combining research
   with critical assessment.”
   
   

A Summer Job as a Compulsory Assignment

On the industry side, there is indeed a thirst for practical experience. “I’d love to hire juniors who already know what’s what, who know development processes up-close,” says Ran Ribenzaft, CTO and co-founding partner at Epsagon. “I’d even download a course and clear some hours for hands-on outside experience. You might consider a summer job as a compulsory assignment sometime during the undergraduate degree.” He is especially short of modern experience: “It’s wonderful to learn how things used to work and what happens under the hood when you execute a command, but cloud development is something that’s hardly ever taught in academia.”

Ribenzaft, who developed an SaaS solution for error monitoring and completed a massive exit when Cisco bought Epsagon, identifies with the skill-based approach, first and foremost the ability to self-learn. “In my view as an academia alumnus, and as someone who takes in alumni as soon as they graduate and take their ‘first splash’, academia’s main job it to teach how to learn. How not to knock your head against the wall with every problem but take a task, fill in the missing knowledge, and come back with a solution. This is a skill that will always be relevant, since the required knowledge ten or fifteen years from now will be different. Even today, we work completely differently than how I used to code ten years ago. Startups that integrated ChatGPT are delivering much faster and with less manpower. The wisdom lies in learning and adapting.”

Bridging the Gap: Industry Perspectives on Engineering Education

We concluded by asking Dr. Chalutz Ben-Gal: How can one gain a senior’s experience if the junior is replaced by the robot? But this, it turns out, is an old world question. “If the structure is flattened, there’s no point asking what a junior is.” She quotes Max Weber, who said that the organization is the central phenomenon of the new age. “We’ve now reached another historical turning point. A change in thinking patterns isn’t simple, and is incumbent upon all of us – employers, engineers, and lecturers. If we cling to the old hierarchy, we’ll miss out. Our core is no longer the job but the skill. And this will allow different skills to amalgamate and form a new structure.” Engineering studies must evolve to reflect this new reality, focusing on skill development and adaptability rather than rigid job roles.