Cash used as a recruiting tool

Computer-savvy engineering grads tantalized with signing bonuses

Signing bonuses, once the sole province of pro athletes and corporate big shots, are suddenly finding their way into the back pockets of wet-behind-the- ears undergraduates — at least those with computer talents.

See also: Grads: Bonus nice perk, didn’t seal the deal Money was not the ultimate bottom line in the job choices of some recent UW–Madison engineering graduates.

Desperate to restock their growing companies from a limited pool of young talent, many computer and engineering firms have turned to the signing bonus as a bona fide recruiting tool, a way to get a leg up in a fiercely competitive field.

“This is definitely a new phenomenon for engineering students,” says Sandra Arnn, director of Engineering Career Services at UW–Madison.

Arnn says she was accustomed to hearing occasional stories of signing bonuses offered to some of the college’s blue-chip students. But beginning last fall, the stories became so common that she added the question to placement surveys of graduating seniors.

The results: roughly two-thirds of all students with electrical and computer engineering degrees accepted a signing bonus from their new employer. And roughly one-third of all engineering graduates — out of more than 400 surveyed for the fall and spring semester — reporting receiving such a perk. The up-front bonuses ranged from $2,000 to $10,000, and averaged in the $5,000 range.

“What’s really remarkable is it’s not just computer companies,” Arnn says. “Almost every Fortune 500 company is in need of engineers who have computer background, and they’re willing to pay signing bonuses to attract them.”

Arnn expects more of the same this fall, when the College of Engineering holds its annual career fair with a record number of participating companies and government agencies. The fair, scheduled for Sept. 15-18 in the lobby of Engineering Hall, was expanded to a four-day event this year to accommodate the interest of 200 employers. The event is co-sponsored by Arnn’s office and the Polygon Engineering Student Council.

Arnn says the signing bonus phenomenon is just one barometer of the banner market for engineering and computer science graduates. Especially in demand are students versed in complex computer architecture, electronic networks and web design. Students who can help remediate Year 2000 computer bug problems are also sought after.

Many students have exposure as undergraduates to technology that’s just being introduced in industry, which means they will make contributions almost immediately, she says.

Another hot field is construction engineering management, an area where the college can’t produce enough graduates to fill the demand.

Like the signing bonus trend, starting salaries are also marching upward for engineers and computer scientists. For 1997-98, average starting salaries for chemical engineers was $45,900; for computer scientists, $43,750; for electrical and computer engineers, $44,000; and for industrial engineers, $41,750.

To most college graduates joining the job market, these numbers may seem in the stratosphere. But the picture was not always this bright for engineers, and only five years ago some engineering students couldn’t buy a job offer, Arnn says.

“It’s hard to believe that five years ago, in the trough of a recession, we were only placing about 50 percent of our engineers,” she says. “We tell students to enjoy it while it’s here, because engineering demand has always run in cycles.”

Ironically, while engineering officials can revel in the success of their students, the market has produced some negative side effects for the colleges themselves. It’s not just undergraduates who are in demand — with doctoral candidates and even professors getting tantalized by big-money offers from industry, schools are having a tough time recruiting and retaining faculty.

Willis Tompkins, chair of the electrical and computer engineering department, is in somewhat of a bind. He just received campus-level approval to start a new major in computer engineering, but the program is contingent on the hiring of two new faculty. Given the department’s recent track record — three faculty job offers, no takers — filling these positions will be extremely tough.

Not only is Tompkins competing with industry, he’s competing with every other electrical engineering program in the country. During a recent national meeting of electrical engineering department chairs, Tompkins said all 160 leaders indicated they were trying to hire computer engineering faculty.

James Goodman, chair of the computer sciences department, says his department has been successful in hiring assistant professors, but less so with hanging on to their seasoned faculty. Last year, the department lost one of their long-time professors to Microsoft, which offered the professor an astonishing amount of stock options.

Fortunately, Goodman says this kind of corporate raiding is discouraged. “Most of our recruiting companies tell us. ‘we don’t want to eat our seed corn, we don’t plan to hire your faculty or your take away your graduate students.’ ”