Auto-cad for engineers? Yes, it is being asked!

Auto-cad for engineers? Yes, it is being asked!
The daughter of my brother just passed the recent professional licensure examinations and she now got a license to practice her profession as an engineer. Her first experience in job hunting is to run into advertisements that demanded knowledge of auto-cad. When she related this to me, I realized that as an engineering student her batch were still into manual type of drafting or drawing 111. How come? Well, knowing that she came from a very good school, I started to wonder, why the updating into electronic drafting was not a priority in their college. Incidentally, she is into metallurgy as a specialized branch of engineering. I was really wondering what auto-cad has to do with certain responsibilities in metallurgy. I often met this in the past, when I myself was into job hunting, as a mature engineer. Being an experienced executive engineer myself and in search for staffs in my area of responsibility, I always came across of job ads posted in newspapers and the internet asking for certain positions, so many extra qualifications, so that I was wondering, whether the position was really filled by some job applicants as specified, or the job specs had to be modified or re-specified during actual hiring. The job specs sometimes are asking for supermen. People who do not exist in real life, as young graduate engineers. Either the job specifier is ignorant of the nature of the job and the kind of training needed to acquire a skill, or the job specifier is asking for an experienced engineer for several years, who in one way or another, had been trained on the job in a particular area of responsibility, too specialized on a particular job, so that the kind of versatility acquired over the years is not going to be available from any college grads fresh from school. Schools seldom train specifically for a particular job in a company, unless there is a special arrangement and tie-up between the Company itself and the University from where the workforce will be recruited from. End result? No matching between college products and the demand for labor force by a particular hiring company.
In this particular case, I noted that electronic drafting is a desirable added knowledge and skill. It also is a good tool for engineers and technical men in general. But, are we talking here of the understanding of the principles of drafting, or are we planning to make auto-cad operators out of professional engineers? It certainly would not hurt, if the position can be filled as requested, but I think, there are so many flaws in job specification writing that we need to correct in the engineering industry. My advice is for the newbie to be hired on the merits of the basic knowledge from the universities, and their trainability. If we have more specialized knowledge requirement that can be acquired on the job, by all means, ask for it from among the experienced guys in the industry, and not from the fresh graduate engineers. Better still, sponsor a special scholarship in the universities that would provide the kind of workforce you plan to hire, and help the universities redesign and shape their curricula to fit what your company needs are; assuming, your workforce demand is huge enough to match the number of graduates every year.
To the question therefore of having auto-cad knowledge for engineers? I would say, Yes but only, when absolutely necessary on the job of a fresh graduate engineer. In the long-term, however, it should be provided by companies as specialized knowledge and training, when absolutely needed on the job.
Written by: Sanoy Suerte, RME/MBM; http://www.linkedin.com/in/sannysuerte ; http://Viralnetworks.com/a/28285 ; http://www.sanysue.viralhosts.com;http://suteambuilder.com/r/teamworkdowonders