Engineering is one of the employment sectors in Australia where employers are crying out for skilled migrants.  There are massive skills shortages, and the gaps in the employment landscape are just not being filled by local people.  So, even if Australia thinks about restricting migrant numbers in 2009 as the nation watches jobless figures rise, sectors such as engineering will go on recruiting.You only have to look at any one of the dedicated recruitment sites and companies seeking employees to work as anything from a civil planner to a mining engineer and you quickly realise how many vacancies there are!

If you’re an engineer with experience, professional qualifications and a desire to find engineering jobs in Australia, you could well discover that 2009 is the perfect year for you to apply for your visa and emigrate.

According to a survey by HiFX, the global currency specialists, up to a quarter of Britons currently want out of the UK as we fall deeper into recession, as the government throws more debt our way and as jobless rates rise.  Well, the good news for those of you who are skilled engineers is that your talent is very much in demand in Australia.  Whilst the nation has a glut of accountants and hairdressers, it is very short on engineers – and even those it does have are of a high average age meaning that the skills shortage already in place is set to rise over the next decade.

For example, engineers in the natural resources industry are aged on average 55, whilst electrical engineers specifically in the mining sector average 53 in age!

Whether you want to work in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney or Perth, there are lists and lists of engineering jobs available.  Dams and hydropower specialists, tunnel design engineers, maritime engineers and even pavement engineers are being sought.  And according to a report in a leading British newspaper about the state of things in Australia in employment sectors such as engineering where demand is so high and the local talent pool is limited, the right candidates are walking off the plane today and into jobs.  They are having their entire relocation sponsored by an only too grateful employer.

Where there is most demand, so salaries are the highest – so even if you’re currently being paid handsomely in the UK and are torn between getting the heck out before the nation’s debt drowns you and remaining to enjoy the good wage, take a good look at what Australian employers offer, and what Australia as a nation offers you!  After all, a country that really wants and needs your skills is going to be more respectful of you in general than one that just wants as much tax out of your wallet as possible!

There is a jobs expo coming up in March in London and in Leeds – each of the four dates will play host to a specific jobs pavilion just for those in engineering.  Employers seeking you and your skills will be there waiting to meet you.  These dates in London and Leeds are perhaps your easiest and best way into a new life Down Under.  You can find engineering jobs in Australia before you even begin thinking about filling in a visa application – and then when you do secure a position, your employer will help you get the visa you need anyway!  See our dedicated article about getting a job in Australia before you migrate through the Opportunities Australia Expo for more information, and check out engineeringjobs.net.au for what’s currently on offer in terms of job available (source: www.shelteroffshore.com).

What is a social strategy in the War for Talent?

Let’s begin by comparing it to a traditional human capital strategy. That approach to recruiting focuses, appropriately enough, on the skills and knowledge of alternative candidates. It is implemented by taking a page from our colleagues in logistics. Basically, we create a supply chain of human beings with the necessary expertise, and we turn that stream of human capability up or down as needed to fill our various openings. In short, a human capital strategy is all about supply-finding enough talent to meet the demand of your organization. Success is defined as putting a qualified person in the right job.

How is such a strategy typically implemented? The successful operation of a supply chain depends upon your ability to find enough human capital to meet the organization’s needs. Hence, the technique of choice is passive and proactive sourcing. A human capital strategy relies on passive recruitment ads and on proactive data mining online and in resume databases; it involves (largely) passive employee referral programs and proactive searching through profiles posted on LinkedIn and other social and business networking sites. However it’s accomplished, it is all about building up an inventory of talent for potential assignment to specific job openings.

A social strategy, in contrast, acknowledges the critical importance of candidates’ skills and knowledge but goes beyond them. It focuses as much on their temperament, personality and personal attributes. It examines their mettle and their potential level of engagement. Why try and get your arms around stuff as squishy as that? Because as important as “hard attributes” like skills and knowledge are, it is a person’s willingness and determination to apply those capabilities to the organization’s mission that enables that organization to succeed.

The hard skills of candidates define human capital; their dedication and loyalty define social capital. In the relatively benign marketplace of the 20th Century, human capital was sufficient for an organization to survive and prosper. In the dangerous marketplace of the 21st Century, only social capital can ensure an organization’s ability to do so.

Why is that? Because research shows that the single greatest cause for a new hire’s sub-par performance or their rapid attrition is not their inability to do the job, but their inability to fit in. As human capital, they’re everything an organization could want; as social capital they’re worthless. And, an organization that is bankrupt in social capital will inevitably (and quickly) be bankrupt in financial capital, as well.

The Hallmarks of a Social Strategy

A social strategy is not about supply. It is all about the right supply. And a successful social strategy doesn’t put a qualified person in the right job, it puts the right qualified person in the right job at the right time. You can’t do that with sourcing alone. You need sourcing and recruiting, but recruiting with a very different kind of emphasis than what we’ve seen in the recent past.

Although not universally so, recruiting in the past five-to-eight years has largely been seen as the art of selection and persuasion. It has been understood to be the effort required:

1. to determine the best qualified person based on the stated requirements for a job
2. and to convince that person to accept an organization’s offer of employment.

As complex and difficult as those two tasks may be, however, they do not provide a complete definition of recruiting. Historically, recruiting has also involved another activity, one that is now vital to victory in the War for the Best Talent. This third task is best described as getting to know candidates as people as well as the paper persona we meet on their resumes.

How is that done?

The activity is basically an exercise in socialization, but in our profession, we have traditionally called it relationship building. Its goal is to uncover those individuals with the right stuff-the subtle but powerful personal characteristics and values that draw out a person’s best work on-the-job and their willingness to continue contributing that work to an organization-or what we have traditionally called peak performance and retention.

Now, as anyone who’s ever been in a relationship knows, it takes time and effort to nurture the familiarity and trust that are the basis for a sound relationship. And even more challenging, many of the relationships we do nurture in recruiting will ultimately identify individuals with the wrong stuff, at least for our organizations. Nevertheless, in today’s and tomorrow’s demanding operational environment, any organization without a robust relationship-building or social strategy is at risk, not only in the War for Talent, but in the war for survival.

It’s up to us, therefore, to move beyond the quest for human capital. In the 21st Century, the primary mission of recruiters must be to enrich our organization’s stock of social capital. We must, for example, stop seeing our resume databases as static storehouses of resumes, and instead treat them as platforms for building relationships with people. We must stop using professional networking sites as virtual barrels of profiles and instead, tap their capabilities to nurture familiarity and trust with talented employment prospects. We must get beyond the simplistic view of humans as simply another form of inert capital and see them instead as complex social beings who have talent to share, but only if they feel like they’re in the right place at the right time for them to do so (source: weddles.com).

“Any company or industry that shuts its doors to the recruitment and training of its next generation of skilled workers will send a clear and long-lasting message that it is in terminal decline.”
David Dearsley, secretary general, International Maritime Employers’ Committee (IMEC)

At a recent conference, International Maritime Employers’ Committee (IMEC) secretary general, David Dearsley argued that although the present world economic crisis is far worse than at the beginning of previous recessions, it would not significantly impact on shipping’s manpower shortage. Expectations based on the results of previous economic recessions would tend to indicate that the shortage of qualified officers is so bad that a significant decline in the number of ships in the world fleet through the scrapping of existing ships, lay-ups and the cancellation of proposed newbuildings, would simply reduce the shortage to more manageable numbers. “Frankly, I doubt this,” Dearsley said.

Dearsley explained that unemployed qualified seafarers have already demonstrated in past recessions that they can assimilate back into the shore-based population relatively easily because their technical and professional skills are transferable. Many shore-based industries, such as in engineering, ports and harbours, and offshore installations value the flexibility and hands-on skills of seafarers.

“Young people all over the world looking for careers as they leave university, use the internet to source information in a way that did not exist even 10 years ago,” he said. “Any company or industry that shuts its doors to the recruitment and training of its next generation of skilled workers will send a clear and long-lasting message that it is in terminal decline. We run the very real risk of sending out this message again today, not just in the UK or Europe but globally, unless we maintain a long-term and far sighted training programme to deal with the crew crisis.” Many owners facing pressure on margins are bound to reduce so called ‘discretionary spending’, which includes the training programme. If the recession produces a reduction in the scale of the officer shortages and reduces the pressure on officer wage rates, it will be even more difficult to resist demands to reduce the number of cadets being trained. The only way forward to making sure that the errors of the past are not repeated is to maintain recruitment and training programmes. Dearsley explained: “This does not mean that they should be maintained precisely as they are today; indeed this would not be sustainable. It means maintaining our intake of cadets but targeting our resources better in order to reduce wastage and improve the quality of the output and where possible spreading the costs with other like-minded companies.”

Long Term Decision

IMEC took a long term strategic decision last year in respect of cadet training. Dearsley said: “When considering the officer shortage we concluded that simply throwing more cadets into the system would not necessarily prove to be the answer in some of our major labour supply countries. The Working Group we established to consider the officer shortage was particularly struck by the fact that some 10% of our Filipino ratings held valid officer licenses. They were also struck by the fact that each year some 18,000 young Filipinos commenced training programmes designed to deliver officer watchkeeping certificates after the four-year period, but only some 4,000 officers were actually produced.

The balance obtained work ashore or became ratings. “Clearly, recruiting yet more cadets into this system would not produce the desired effect of producing enough officers to overcome the shortage. So we decided to follow the lead already initiated by the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association and try to change the system. Starting from scratch this year we decided to select cadets to educational, aptitude and medical standards that we set, to train them to standards we set, in particular in respect of reduced class sizes and the provision of educational materials and equipment, and to ensure that the lecturers were fully competent and selected by IMEC.

“The programme is fully sponsored through International Maritime Training Trust (IMTT) and the cadets receive a full scholarship covering tuition fees, accommodation and food, uniforms and training materials. The cadets are assured of the 12 months sea time training with an IMEC member during the third training year and will return to that company once they have obtained their officer license,” he said. IMEC firmly believes that the cadet training programme is a long-term, farsighted way to produce the number of qualified seafarers that the industry requires and of a standard of competence in excess of current standards.

Dearsley said: “Of particular importance given the current economic crisis, the manner in which the programme is financed through an industry fund should minimise cost during a time when training budgets will inevitably come under severe pressure.” (source: tankeroperator.com)

The State University of New York Maritime College offers degree programs in both Engineering and Business disciplines. The Bachelor of Engineering degrees includes Mechanical, Marine, Electrical Engineering option and Naval Architecture. The Bachelor of Science degrees include Facilities Engineering, Transportation Management, Marine Environmental Science and Humanities. Our graduates’ master the hands on experience with the 565ft Training Ship Empire State located at our campus.

The Department of Global Business and Transportation (GBAT) is responsible for SUNY Maritime’s courses in business, economics, international trade, logistics and transportation systems. The Department has lead responsibility for two of the Colleges degrees—the Masters of Science in International Transportation Management and the Bachelor of Science in International Trade and Transportation, an upper division program designed primarily for community college graduates. GBAT provides business and transportation systems courses in support of the Bachelor of Science in Marine Transportation and the Colleges other degree programs.

Please see below an overview of hiring companies that will be recruiting at the SUNY Maritime College Career Fair:

The survey was undertaken by undertaken by international shipping recruiter Faststream whose managing director Mark Charman said that 58% of the respondents agreed that recruitment was a big challenge. He said: “Vacancy levels in the shore-based LNG sector are at a record high and we forecast them to continue growing. Employers face competition for talent not only from direct competitors, but also banks and power companies who need people with specialist marine engineering know-how.”

Competition for those with seafaring LNG experience was “fierce” and that rising salaries at sea were setting expectations ashore. He added: “The ongoing uncertainty driven by the credit crunch has led to candidates being much less willing to take a chance and relocate to a new company. The promise of large bonuses is failing to attract candidates, with base salary a far more important factor.”

Mr Charman advised LNG shipping companies and terminal operators to change their attitude to recruitment strategies and to take a lead from other industries when seeking to hire top talent in a candidate short market (source: mglobal.com)