Technical & Engineering Recruitment Market Commentary – July 2016

There was no shortage of reasons for employers to feel pensive over the past quarter, with a federal election and Brexit. Despite this, in our experience, employers kept hiring & investing. We’ve also noticed several of our good medium sized clients taking steps to offer their products & services internationally for the first time, taking advantage of Australia’s strong reputation for quality & innovation and also the lower Aussie dollar.

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

Building & Mechanical Services

Most of our recruitment activity has been on the contractor side with some recruitment for the consulting engineering firms.

Typical roles that we have filled include mechanical HVAC service technicians, and project and account managers. We are looking out for electrical HVAC service technicians and ticketed boiler technicians, mainly for Sydney. In Melbourne, we are very interested to speak with project managers who have services experience with road and rail tunnels to work in the consulting sector.

Engineering & Drafting

The “in-demand” candidates at the moment are specialists in road transport, rail overhead traction, recreational vehicles, off road safety vehicles and machine tools. There has also been a marked increase in requirements for senior engineering professionals across the food and consulting engineering industry sectors. We have been recruiting product design engineers, project engineers, process engineers, operations engineers, after-sales service engineers and service technicians. Most opportunities are in Victoria although there has been a steady increase in NSW.

Engineering drafting is still challenging. We have experienced an uptick in permanent vacancies for CAD drafters with AutoCAD skills and experience in mechanical services and those with SolidWorks and Tekla. Contract requirements are similar. Where are all the experienced Drafters?

Manufacturing

In our world, manufacturing is alive and growing. Whilst the greatest demand has been from the Food & Beverage industry, we are seeing opportunities in construction materials, specialised vehicle manufacture and appliances. Most of these companies may not be household names but they have made the decision to expand despite the negativity we tend to hear about manufacturing. We are regularly filling roles for manufacturing managers and operations & distribution managers.

Technology

Now that the distraction of elections and EOFY are over, we can all get back to business. In electronics and firmware design and development, demand remains reasonably high, but as always, for some very specific skill sets – every company has their own particular blend of requirements. Currently it seems to be a mix of digital and analogue circuit design with CAD software, plus proven ability to design firmware and do the embedded programming. ARM Cortex micro seems to come up frequently in job specs these days. Likewise, the demand for top notch C++ and now Java developers continues apace, all with experience of developing real world products, devices or instruments. Having said that, the calibre of the individual is what counts rather than whether he or she has worked on a particular product which always makes the difference when decisions are made for job offers. Remarkably, we have an acute shortage of real good software/web test/QA specialists, with automation experience (especially for frontend and API testing) and we are very active in that area now. Anybody know anyone? It could be a busy run into Christmas.

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