Are computer science and engineering graduates ready for the software industry? Experiences from an industrial student training program

Date
2018
Editor(s)
Advisor
Supervisor
Co-Advisor
Co-Supervisor
Instructor
Source Title
ICSE-SEET '18 Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training
Print ISSN
0270-5257
Electronic ISSN
Publisher
ACM
Volume
Issue
Pages
68 - 77
Language
English
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Series
Abstract

It has been 50 years since the term "software engineering" was coined in 1968 at a NATO conference. The field should be relatively mature by now, with most established universities covering core software engineering topics in their Computer Science programs and others offering specialized degrees. However, still many practitioners lament a lack of skills in new software engineering hires. With the growing demand for software engineers from the industry, this apparent gap becomes more and more pronounced. One corporate strategy to address this gap is for the industry to develop supplementary training programs before the hiring process, which could also help companies screen viable candidates. In this paper, we report on our experiences and lessons learned in conducting a summer school program aimed at screening new graduates, introducing them to core skills relevant to the organization and industry, and assessing their attitudes toward mastering those skills before the hiring process begins. Our experience suggests that such initiatives can be mutually beneficial for new hires and companies alike. We support this insight with pre- A nd post-training data collected from the participants during the first edition of the summer school and a follow-up questionnaire conducted after a year with the participants, 50% of whom were hired by the company shortly after the summer school.

Course
Other identifiers
Book Title
Citation
Published Version (Please cite this version)