Technical & Engineering Recruitment Market Commentary – January 2016

Whether it’s coincidental or not, from the moment Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister in September, hiring activity accelerated dramatically. The trend has continued into this year and January was not its usual slow-starting month. Our main markets are Victoria & NSW and these states topped the current Commsec “State of the States” report on economic performance.

Although the building industry is a major driver of this growth, there has also been a resurgence in manufacturing. The Australian Industry Group’s PMI Index has reported that manufacturing has expanded for each of the past 6 months. The lower dollar is undoubtedly assisting a range of these manufacturers. We are also experiencing the strongest demand for software & hardware engineers for the past 15 years.

Following are more specific observations of some of the key engineering and technical markets in which we operate.

Building and Mechanical Services

This is the one area we operate in where we haven’t noticed significant change against the previous quarter. In the consulting area there has not been any notable upswing in employment opportunities, although some specialist firms have been recruiting candidates in mid-level engineering roles. We believe there will be encouraging news in the wind in coming months with some groups predicting the awarding of contracts which have been in the assessment stage for a prolonged period.

Within mechanical services, our busiest area is on the contractor side with many requirements across the board ranging from service technicians to project engineers and senior managers.

Engineering and Drafting

Engineering recruitment is strong and we have been recruiting for a wide range of industry sectors, including food, heavy transport, industrial, electronics, textiles and paints & coatings and mechanical services. The types of roles included Materials & Process Development Engineers, Manufacturing Engineers, Project Managers, Engineering Managers, Design & Simulation Engineers, Manufacturing & Process Automation Engineers, After Sales Service Engineers, Quality Control Laboratory Personnel and Maintenance Technicians.

In the construction industry, architects are in high demand as the level of new building work on the east coast remains strong for now. Whilst professionals with concept design experience including design managers and CAD drafters top the list, design architects with residential, commercial and retail experience are also in demand along with senior project architects and architectural drafters with strong software skills including Revit and CAD. The shortage of candidates with strong Revit skills shows little sign of abating. Demand for residential drafters, Revit drafters and senior to mid-level Revit technicians with experience on high-rise multi-unit residential projects is red hot. In Sydney, it is pretty much a candidate’s market amid a strong backlog of work across a variety of sectors. The process of finding suitable candidates with the right attitude and a willingness to be held accountable for their work is becoming difficult. Salaries, however, are being pitched conservatively as a number of firms have had to compromise on margins in order to win projects.

Manufacturing

We experienced a busy pre-Christmas period with our manufacturing clients and the good news is that 2016 is showing the same high level of activity. Increased manufacturing requirements have come from a wide range of industry sectors, including food, automotive, industrial, textiles and paints & coatings. We’ve been recruiting broadly across manufacturing management, operational and technical roles in these sectors.

Labour hire within manufacturing continued strongly through the quarter as expected, with the traditional increase in manufacturing requirements to cover the Christmas period. The food, industrial, electronics and metal sectors had solid demand for both skilled and unskilled roles such as process workers, blenders, assemblers and forklift drivers. Of particular note was a marked increase in permanent roles for skilled labour such as team leaders, machine operators and warehouse personnel. Employers are shortening the recruitment process and making use of counter offers to retain good employees. The market is not short on candidates – the major challenge is finding suitable people to do the job with the right attitude, experience and skills. Our clients are telling us that we’ll continue to be busy in the first quarter of 2016.

Technology

The long anticipated return to growth, at least in employer demand, has begun. It all seemed to coincide with a change of incumbent at the Lodge. For whatever reason, employer confidence to hire has surged from that moment and has not slowed since. It has been pretty well across the board in terms of level of experience and discipline, such as firmware, web services, software, hardware, and a sprinkling of technicians too. Employer expectation has not, however, reduced in terms of quality of candidate. We increasingly see job descriptions state that candidates must be in the top echelon of ability, not just better than average, but even top 10%. Everyone seeks a “Lionel Messi” – if you don’t know who he is, have a look on Youtube. This is going to skew the market with developers who are perceived to be ‘brilliant’ having recruiters woo them, and probably receiving a selection of offers, whilst ordinary mortals will be scraping to find an employer to hire them. Is this an extreme reaction? Is it the consequence of globalisation? Is it absolutely necessary (to apply the “Messi” test to candidates)? Time will tell, but normally things balance out, however, it means that if you are a candidate, you need to have something special to offer the potential employer. You need to narrow the gap from being just good to being exceptionally good. You have to (figuratively) “dress to impress” at interview. You will not get to where you want to be by just being OK.

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