Page 22 - BusinessWest June 17, 2024

for somebody else because we didn’t have offices there. Now we do. From a growth perspective, it helps to be able to transfer you among other offices.”
But with some turnover to be expected in a company this size, and with a goal of growing both organi- cally and through acquisitions, Tighe & Bond needs to onboard more than 100 new employees each year, and doing
so successfully requires it to stand out from its competitors in a number of ways, Belitz said, from its employee- ownership model to hybrid work sched- ules; from a strong benefits program to a broad mix of projects.
Sullivan said communicating the
“I say to a lot of young people, ‘you know, everything you can see has been designed by engineers. Engineers literally designed the entire world.’”
“I am looking for future business partners. You’re working with the people that are managing the business, you’re getting day-to-day experience in that, and there’s real, clear potential for somebody to be a stockholder, be on the board of directors, and guide the company sooner than they might at a larger company. We can give examples of that. So that’s something that we try to explain. We feel that, if we’re effec- tive in communicating that, we’ll find the right people.”
Mission Driven
As a civil engineer teaching at a women’s liberal-arts college, Glenn
Ellis, a professor of Engineering at Smith College, said his students often come to the field from a specific mind- set — namely, social impact.
“The number-one thing I hear from students is they want to do some good for the world, to make the world a better place,” he told BusinessWest. “They’re very interested in sustain- ability. That’s the number-one draw for many students as an engineer. And you can really make an impact on all sorts of things.”
That line of thinking resonates with Sullivan. “One of the things I think is so great about engineering — particularly about civil engineering or the environmental engineering that we do — is that we make our commu- nity better,” she said. “We’re an impor- tant part of that, and you can see it.”
Ellis noted that the industry code of ethics now includes sustainability as a key tenet, which dovetails with what his students are demanding. But he also said young people are drawn to the sheer diversity of engineering and how broadly it impacts the world.
“The more young people know what an engineer is, the more they’re interested in it. Studies show that the reason why way fewer women than men are engineers is not because women leave these programs at a higher rate than men; they leave at the same rate. It’s that they don’t go into engineering programs to begin with.” And the time to start capturing their interest, he added — not just for engineering but for all STEM fields, where women have been historically underrepresented — is not college or even high school, but middle school.
“I think that’s the time to develop
a STEM identity. When you ask kids in middle school if they want to be engineers, they say, ‘I don’t know what that is,’ or ‘that’s really boring; you just work on pipes and buildings.’”
Ellis spoke with one young girl who said she wasn’t interested in engineering, but she wanted to work in the medical realm, helping to design artificial limbs that will help people.
“I said, ‘that’s engineering — that’s bioengineering.’ Young people don’t know what engineering is, so you
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GLENN ELLIS
culture of a company to job seekers is also critical.
“When we’ve had conversations where we effectively communicate that,
people are very interested in working here,” she said, adding that another fac- tor is communicating a clear path to career advancement.