Engagement and Continuous Improvement Keep Co-op Program Going Strong
VHB, a multidisciplinary consulting firm with an innovative team of engineers, scientists, planners, and designers, goes the extra mile to stay engaged with engineering students, participate in campus events, and continually evolve its co-op program. It is a formula that has worked for decades and earned it the College of Engineering Outstanding Employer Award.
VHB has been hiring Northeastern co-op students for decades, and while many factors contribute to a successful co-op program, the standout for this civil engineering design and consulting firm is its commitment to student success.
To date, the company, which started in Watertown, Massachusetts and now has offices throughout the East Coast, has hired upwards of 500 co-op students and approximately 200 of those have become full-time VHB engineers since the late 1980s.
Its efforts were recognized in 2022 when it received the Outstanding Employer Award from the College of Engineering for its record in supporting students.
“I’d like to think that was because students have enjoyed their experiences with us across the board,” says Kathleen Keen, E’13, civil engineering, who joined VHB as a co-op in 2010 and is now based in Tampa, Florida as managing director of the Florida Gulf Coast leading VHB’s Tampa and Sarasota offices.
VHB staff participate in campus co-op events such as career fairs, attend student group events as guest speakers, and serve as judges on senior capstone projects. “We are always happy to help when Northeastern reaches out,” Keen says.
VHB also adapts its co-op program to meet the changing needs of students and its staff. As an example, VHB redesigned its co-op hiring process several years ago by developing a co-op open house to replace the traditional interview process. The open houses are held during the start of a co-op hiring period and are far more efficient than holding a series of one-on-one interviews, Keen says.
“We now have the ability to meet many more students,” says Keen, who championed the mixer concept while working in the Watertown office. Plus, it is a wonderful opportunity for students to practice their interviewing skills.
The open house is a two-hour, one-night event where VHB provides a company overview and students are encouraged to mingle and conduct casual, mini-interviews with various VHB team members.
“Most of them will interview with two or three different departments during the open house and then we have the ability to give a more holistic perspective on VHB, demonstrating our culture in a fun and social setting,” Keen says.
The students who make the strongest impressions receive offers to join VHB as a co-op for the coming period.
Another program change resulted from a response to the COVID pandemic. During that time, VHB adapted the co-op open house to a virtual setting which enabled VHB to engage offices outside of their New England region and expand co-op opportunities for students and VHB.
“It sparked the idea that we could engage some of our other offices who might have a need or a desire for a co-op,” Keen says.
Since that time, co-op students have been hired “from Maine to North Carolina and I am hoping to entice some students down here in Tampa soon,” Keen says.
Each season, VHB identifies the number of co-op students it will need and typically hires between 10 and 15 students per co-op session. The program has long provided a solid return on investment, measured to a great extent by the number of full-time employees the company has hired from the co-op pool, Keen says.
Additionally, it helps with staff development by offering mentoring and management opportunities to junior employees who are interested in working with co-ops, Keen says.
“At that early-career stage, they can learn to work with others, learn how to delegate, and how to break things down into manageable tasks,” she adds.
Co-ops also contribute to VHB’s goal of staffing projects with a range of experience levels. This supports its “generational” approach to its workforce, believing that individuals can learn from all employees, regardless of tenure.
“There is so much benefit to having individuals from different generations and from different backgrounds on a team,” Keen adds, noting team members “respectfully challenging each other” to generate the most innovative ideas.
Often, managers who themselves were co-ops will work with incoming co-op hires. Keen says she benefited during her own co-op experiences from managers who had been Northeastern co-op students.
“It was really helpful to see what a potential career progression for me could be,” Keen says.