Are Computer Science and Engineering Graduates Ready for the Software Industry? Experiences from an Industrial Student Training Program

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 them 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 the 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. We support this insight with pre- and post-training data collected from the participants during the first edition of such a summer school and a follow-up questionnaire conducted after a year with the graduates, 50% of whom was hired by the company shortly after the summer school.