2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The transition from college to the engineering workplace poses significant challenges for recent engineering graduates, as they navigate unfamiliar organizational context and negotiate real world engineering projects with escalating complexities and uncertainties. Career resilience plays an important role in early career engineers’ identify transition from students to professionals, yet current literature examining the career resilience of engineers is rather limited, and the samples of resilience studies were largely confined to engineers in North America. Based on interviews with 16 early career engineers in China, this paper presents a grounded theory analysis of the development of career resilience for recent engineering graduates at the workplace. The study found that perceived mini-crises, supporting resources, and positive adaptation are the three ladders of career resilience for early career engineers. In particular, risk awareness resulted from perceptions of crisis triggers the needs of career resilience; internal and external resources of support help boost resilience; and positive adaption signals the completion of resilience for early career engineers. This study extends understandings of resilience for early career engineers in broader cultural contexts. The paper also discusses implications of the research findings for universities to create a more congenial environment for the development of career resilience and successful transition of engineering graduates to the workplace.