Engineering & Technical Recruitment Market Commentary – July 2013
Across our main engineering & technical markets over the past quarter, there hasn’t been a movement into either positive or negative territory. Employers have not had a lot of confidence to aggressively add staff and things aren’t a disaster either – it’s just that we seem to have been in a holding pattern for the year to date. There are pockets of companies and sub-industries which are flying however this is not the general story. Certainly the last couple of months of the Australian dollar dropping has provided relief, however up to now it has not translated into a broad movement to recruit staff. We suspect companies are waiting for certainty over policy decisions which will occur after the federal election.
From where we sit, Sydney looks marginally more confident than Melbourne and for some reason, we’ve also experienced a surge in demand from employers in the Middle East looking to recruit engineers with Australian experience.
Consulting Engineering
The consulting engineering market continues to be very tough nationally with many redundancies of professional engineers, designers and drafters in 2013. Having said that, we are still recruiting senior level engineers and designers for small to medium engineering consultancies. The reasons for the slowness of the market are deferment of existing projects, a lack of enough new projects and the uncertainty caused by the long lead-in time to the federal election.
In Melbourne, Expressions of Interest have been advertised for Stage 1 of the East West Link, whilst some new projects are also starting to emerge in Sydney and we are hopeful of a strong end of the year with both contract and permanent recruitment for engineers and designers.
Drafting
Victoria
Things are still relatively quiet on the drafting front in Melbourne. We have had a number of contract requirements calling for AutoCAD 2D, Solidworks, Inventor and Sketchup. Industries have included process plant, marine propulsion, plumbing and commercial kitchens.
Contract roles are typically for about one to two months, with some extending beyond this depending on client workloads. In some instances we have filled contracts of about 12 months. Permanent roles in drafting have been non-existent.
Contract rates have been trending downwards, so you need to be flexible as the contract market is very competitive.
We always welcome updates of resumes so, if you haven’t sent yours in recently it would be a good idea to as soon as you can. We believe the market will turn, but gradually.
NSW and QLD
The drafting market in NSW and QLD has been quite slow but we are still looking for specialist drafters with Solidworks experience for the special purpose machinery, custom vehicles and agricultural industries.
The QLD market has seen a steady growth in bulk housing projects and the Architectural market. We would be interested to hear from experienced architectural drafters with a solid background in ArchiCAD. We are also looking for experienced survey drafters with a strong civil background.
We are always interested in seeing details from experienced drafters in NSW and QLD for future positions.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing recruitment activity has been on the up this quarter. Demand for permanent and contract positions has increased across a number of sectors, with the biggest increase coming from the food industry.
With respect to demand for professionals within manufacturing, we have been busy recruiting for Production Managers and Supervisors, Project Managers, Technical Managers, Engineering Managers, Internal and External Technical Support Staff, Service Engineers, Quality Engineers and Sales Engineers in the food, pharmaceutical and machinery manufacturing areas.
On-hired industrial labour in Melbourne has seen an increase in demand for trade qualified candidates in specialist fields – we have been recruiting electricians, fitters and welders in particular. Demand is still strong in logistics for stores personnel and forklift drivers. We’re not experiencing many requirements for on-hired staff in the electronics sector but food manufacturing is staying steady. With a pick-up in the residential construction sector in Sydney, this is having a positive effect on manufacturers supplying products to the new housing market.
In Sydney the demand for trades and semi-skilled people in the automotive (bus & coach) sector is booming. We have successfully placed a large number of people in a variety of ongoing casual roles, such as spray painting, welding / fabricating, trade assistants, automotive body building & electrical and design drafters. We have also experienced increased demand for both on hire and permanent roles from the general manufacturing and warehousing sectors.
Technology
Engineering
The market for electronic and firmware engineering has noticeably slowed in the run up to the end of the financial year and the start of the new year. Vacancies for both permanent and contract Developers are scarcer than is normally the case around now, with the reasons for this slowdown open to conjecture – eg economic, or political, or sliding Aussie dollar. Therefore, it is still perceived as a buyer’s market with all that entails in terms of downward pressure on salaries and employers’ high expectations in terms of candidates’ range of skills. It used to be that a graduate entry role was simply that – a newly qualified person, wet behind the ears, but ready to learn, but now the graduate is expected to demonstrate as much competence as an Engineer with around 2 years solid design experience. Makes it tough for the newcomer. The more traditional industries in the technology sector are not hiring, in the main, including automotive, telecommunications, and industrial controls. Yet the electronic/software design consultancies are faring much better, with a very strong emphasis now on embedded systems with both C and C++. Opportunities for good, old fashioned straight embedded C are waning. So, to get ahead, rather than get a hat, dust down your object oriented design text books, and swot up on C++. We await an upturn in demand.
IT
Amid the hullabaloo of mass retrenchments, the impending downturn of the economy and the upcoming elections, the IT job market appears to be following suit. The IT job sector is experiencing bearish sentiment. This allows companies to be a little fastidious with whom they bring on board. More of our clients are insisting that candidates complete technical and psychometric tests. Many of our clients are looking for a high calibre of smart, technically competent staff that also have the soft skills like team fit and good communication skills to match. Cloud computing and web-based skills are certainly in demand, in particular mobile applications, Android and Sharepoint development. For those of you who think that Agile is another rage, think again. You will have to jump on the bandwagon or else be left behind. The need for Agile project managers will become standard practice. Now is the time to scrub up your skills.
