Every year, new graduates enter the workplace with great expectations for their careers. For many, the transition from school to work is challenging as they learn to fit into their new roles and organizational settings. Often, they find this experience to be not what they expected and experience feelings of frustration, uncertainty, or disappointment in their new jobs. This article reports on the socialization experiences of 41 newly hired engineers and 15 of their managers in three different organizations. Using an inductive, qualitative approach to collecting and analyzing in‐depth interviews, the findings indicated that socialization processes, designed to help newcomers learn about and integrate into new jobs, are more ambiguous and difficult than many newcomers and managers expected. We found that the best intentions of some managers and newcomers were misinterpreted and thus fell short of expectations. The findings indicate how the misinterpretations of newcomers and managers negatively affected the quality of learning, performance, and satisfaction during socialization. The implications of these misinterpretations point to crucial gaps in the educational preparation of graduates for the workplace and shortcomings in the socialization or onboarding of new hires in organizations.

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The Problem. Recently there has been a growing interest to increase the number of people entering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. One of the major problems with this "supply-side" model is that it sees STEM workforce development narrowly as one of inputs (recruitment) and ignores the practice of STEM work, which affects the retention of professionals in STEM careers. The Solution. Informed by recent research and theory on career development, we studied the work experiences of newly hired engineers in one organization. A key finding is that a major part of their experiences involved organizational work and social dynamics outside of what many considered to be "real" engineering work. We propose that these experiences provide important insights for the education and retention of STEM workers. The Stakeholders. Faculty in higher education that prepare STEM workers, managers in organizations that hire new STEM workers, and aspiring STEM workers.

Increasingly, American engineers contend with challenges at work including rapid technological innovation and the needs of changing workplaces (Duderstadt 2008; National Academy of Engineering 2008b; National Research Council 2007). In response, industry, government, and professional societies have called on educators to better prepare engineering students by emphasizing not only technical but professional competencies (Jamieson and Lohmann 2009; Sheppard et al. 2008; Shuman, Besterfield-Sacre, and McGourty 2005). There is a consensus in the engineering community that those competencies include communication skills, business skills, teamwork skills, creativity, lifelong-learning skills, and problem-solving skills (ABET 2011; American Society of Civil Engineers 2008; McMasters and Matsch 1996; National Academy of Engineering 2004). Yet, despite calls for reform, engineering programs are often based on an outdated image of engineering practice that is misaligned with reality

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