Engineering

09 June 2010

Despite the spectre of public sector cuts as the government implements a £6bn package of savings in the sector this year, demand for engineers is spread over a wide array of sectors and international destinations.

Both employers and recruiters have had to look at innovative solutions in this particular war for talent.

“We’re competing with other industries that traditionally have a sexier image than rail. However, Network Rail deliver 5,000 engineering projects a year, and has some of the biggest civil engineering projects in Europe - Cross-rail, Thameslink, Birmingham New St revamp, Read-ing,” says Adrian Thomas, Network Rail’s head of resourcing.

According to David Leyshon, managing director at CBSbutler, this war for talent is fought on international fronts.

“Those that are reliant on the domestic market, on defence programmes like Trident and some of the government sector projects, including local government ones, are going to see those things shelved.

“Most process engineers and mechanical, civil engineers and project managers continue to be in demand overseas. In the emerging developing countries in Asia, the Middle East and Far East and South America, demand is pretty robust.”

Those that are reliant on the domestic market, on defence programmes like Trident and some of the government sector projects, including local government ones, are going to see those things shelved.

Despite engineers seemingly able to pick and choose between employers and even the country in which they would like to work, UK employers are looking further than the right diploma from the right institution, says Richard Hamer, education director and head of early career programmes at BAE Systems.

“We recruit a significant number of systems and software engineers, but our recruitment policies tend to reach further than specific skills-sets.

“We look carefully at softer skills and place emphasis on identify-ing candidates who can show the right attitudinal, communication and behavioural skills.”
Recruitment delivery manager at TfL Alan MacKinnon adds that the sector also suffers from a leadership gap, lacking engineers with strong people and management skills.

MacKinnon says that trying to attract the right candidates with benefits is not always a solution.

“It is sometimes difficult to attract good engineers for permanent roles, even with very competitive reward and benefits packages. The temporary labour market offers better daily rates but not necessarily the best career opportunities for engineers in the longer term.”

Ultimately with competition so fierce, according to Russell Dalglish, managing director at Talascend, success in this sector may lie in taking a different approach.
For example, Dalglish says that the technical recruiter’s US operation was faced with trying to place a number of computer aided design (CAD) specialists in the oil and gas sector in Houston. With the recession in the US hitting Detroit’s automotive sector hard, good CAD designers found themselves out of work.

“If you have experience of CAD for automobile and you are applying to an oil company, you are probably not going to get through the front door because they are going to go for the guys with oil and gas experience.

“What we did was link with oil and gas companies, telling them that these guys have got 20 years of CAD experience in auto-mobiles but can be retrained.

“We took people out of Detroit, put them through retraining courses to work in oil and gas and placed them. The guys in Houston are getting top class talent.”