12th June 2019 – Valencia
Are you, like so many others in the high-tech electronics market, struggling to attract and retain all the specialist engineers you need to keep your R&D department at the forefront of your market?
Expected skills shortage for the sector
Well, unfortunately it looks like it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The skills gap in this sector is widening at a faster rate than ever. Most companies are experiencing major issues as a result of skill shortages in this area. Whether you are designing a new range of IoT devices, driverless cars, 5G networks & handsets, industrial robots or even small patient monitoring devices, you are going to really struggle to find the skills you need. All of the above technologies have experienced stunning growth rates over the past few years, causing great concerns amongst the Electronic Industries leading figures. In a recent survey of CEO’s and CTO’s in the Semiconductor Industry by KPMG many see real problems in aligning resource for their growth opportunities. Over 64% of respondents named talent risk as one of the top 3 threats to their organisation’s growth.
Lack of good candidates
Most are experiencing the same problems; lack of good candidates, lack of commitment, increasing salary demands, more flexible working conditions, escalating attrition rates and job hopping for higher salaries are all issues that CTO’s and R&D Managers are having to contend with on a day to day basis. As projects start to fall behind schedule and budgets are exceeded, managers are having to spend more and more time on personnel issues instead of being able to focus on driving technical innovation.
Old-fashioned recruitment and outsourcing companies not keeping pace
The answer to these issues over the past decade has been to look to the contract market to help plug the gaps, however over the past few years, it has become very difficult to find the right experience to make an immediate impact on any project. Recruitment and Outsourcing companies have not kept pace with the rapid changes in these industries and most are continuing to offer age old solutions to a futuristic world of technology. Innovation is sadly lacking in Recruitment and Outsourcing markets, leaving clients struggling to find and retain good quality candidates or having to outsource parts of their work to old fashioned inflexible outsourcing solutions. Outsourcing offshore to other continents has always been a challenging prospect and in today’s electronics engineering market, projects require a lot more flexibility and change, in stark contrast to what is being offered by most outsourcing organisations.
New initiatives will help
There is however some light at the end of the tunnel. Many companies are starting to look at innovative ways to try to increase the talent pool by introducing new initiatives in partnership with the top engineering Universities. According to Deloitte-SEMI (2017) an industry-academia partnership model is delivering benefits for a growing number of semiconductor companies.
While this is a very important evolution, it is not yet known how successful these initiatives are likely to be, so companies are still left asking themselves how can we bridge the gap in the short term?
Time for change- New breed of contracting and outsourcing company
The answer could be to look at a new breed of contracting and outsourcing company like CIS Electronics Engineering. CIS has designed a whole new range of services specifically targeted towards resolving the current and future resource problems of the electronics market.
They have identified one of the biggest problems in finding and retaining top engineering talent relates directly to geographical location. Companies located in European capitals or major technology hubs, experience the most difficulty. Cost of living is very high, local competition for skills can be fierce, resulting is spiralling costs and attrition rates. There are however some areas of Europe where the situation is the reverse. Valencia is one such city where the cost of living is low, competition for engineering talent is low, Universities are producing more engineering talent than the local market can handle so the salaries are far lower that most of our counterparts in Europe.
Focus on local talent
By focusing on local talent, CIS has created a way to harness this talent and organise it in a way that it can be made available to any leading engineering company across Europe. Their solutions are both ground breaking and cost effective in offering a wide range of modular components incorporated within a custom made solution which is highly versatile and flexible.
In this way Electronics Companies will be able to add an additional tool to their future R&D resource planning. By working with a true 'Outsourced Workforce' partner like CIS, they will be able to solve all the additional HR and project delivery issues caused by the shortage of skilled engineers.