Not sure what engineering sector you were hiring for, but I have worked with some very, very bright young grads on a recent mine construction project.
Interestingly, they were all sons of Chinese immigrants to Canada but were top-notch civil, mechanical and structural engineers.
“Not sure what engineering sector you were hiring for, but I have worked with some very, very bright young grads on a recent mine construction project.”
I was instructed that I would hire from our local historically black college. We needed some highly compensated minorities to satisfy a clause in our government contract. The EOE audit team was all black so the many Asians and Hispanics did not count. While most of the historically black graduates could at least speak presentable English, they were barely literate. The absolute best people I hired were from Central America. They spoke better English than most of the locally born and they all wrote very decently. When I asked why they told me that learning English was a high priority in their culture.
I was hiring at a time when everybody was going to be an overnight millionaire from just having a dotcom idea. Nobody wanted to do the work required to get an Engineering degree. (My impression is the non-historically black graduates and the blacks going through the regular non-historically black side of campus are really good engineers.)