Almasri, A., & Santiago, L., & Hamrick, T. R., & Hensel, R. A., & Hulcher, C., & Oppong-Anane, A. B. (2025, June), WIP: Key Technical and Professional Skills Valued by Engineering Employers for Workforce Success  Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/57428

\bibitem{asee_peer_57428}
  Almasri, A., \& Santiago, L., \& Hamrick, T. R., \& Hensel, R. A., \& Hulcher, C., \& Oppong-Anane, A. B. (2025, June), \emph{WIP: Key Technical and Professional Skills Valued by Engineering Employers for Workforce Success}
  Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada .
  https://peer.asee.org/57428

Atheer Almasri, Lizzie Santiago, Todd R Hamrick, Robin A.M. Hensel, Carter Hulcher, and Akua B. Oppong-Anane.  "WIP: Key Technical and Professional Skills Valued by Engineering Employers for Workforce Success".  2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada , 2025, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2025.  https://peer.asee.org/57428 Internet.  20 Aug, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_57428}
  Atheer Almasri, Lizzie Santiago, Todd R Hamrick, Robin A.M. Hensel, Carter Hulcher, and Akua B. Oppong-Anane.
  "WIP: Key Technical and Professional Skills Valued by Engineering Employers for Workforce Success".
  \emph{2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada , 2025, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2025.
  https://peer.asee.org/57428 Internet.  20 Aug, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_57428
author = "Atheer Almasri, Lizzie Santiago, Todd R Hamrick, Robin A.M. Hensel, Carter Hulcher, and Akua B. Oppong-Anane"
title = "WIP: Key Technical and Professional Skills Valued by Engineering Employers for Workforce Success"
booktitle = "2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition "
year = "2025"
month = "June"
address = "Montreal, Quebec, Canada "
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/57428}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The goal of this study is to find out which professional and technical skills are seen as important by different engineering industries. Professional skills are people skills that help with communication and teamwork and they are essential to achieve organizational development and effectiveness.  Technical skills, however, are  specific knowledge needed to complete tasks or solve problems and they are important for helping companies be productive, grow and work well.
This study focused on two main questions: What technical and professional skills do employers want their engineers to master? And how do these skills differ by industry? This project was conducted in an R1, land-grant, large public university in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Thirty-seven employers took part in a survey shared at the 2024 STEM career fair through a QR code. The participants worked in engineering-related fields including manufacturing, construction, energy, and environmental science. The survey included multiple-choice and open-ended questions, and the study was approved by the university’s Institutional Review Board.
All of the industry sectors in the study valued the professional skills of teamwork, effective communication (oral and written), and time management. The top technical skills that employers needed were using appropriate estimation techniques and computational tools (such as Excel, MATLAB),  and analyzing data using statistics. Differences were found, depending on the type of industry, regarding which skills were most important. The results from this study will help first year engineering programs decide which professional and technical skills should be emphasized in engineering courses to better prepare students for their careers. These key skills will be discussed in this paper.

AU  - Atheer Almasri
AU  - Lizzie Santiago
AU  - Todd R Hamrick
AU  - Robin A.M. Hensel
AU  - Carter Hulcher
AU  - Akua B. Oppong-Anane
CY  - Montreal, Quebec, Canada 
DA  - 2025/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - WIP: Key Technical and Professional Skills Valued by Engineering Employers for Workforce Success
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/57428
ER  -