Engineered myth

To stick to the thread of recruitment, this post will discuss the engineering industry, another faker.

Bosses of engineering companies are always complaining about the lack of qualified engineers in the UK. They could be right. At universities up and down the land, engineering departments are only surviving because of the influx of foreign students who pay a premium to come to these cold wet shores. Where are the natives? Certainly not in the engineering departments. They are a rare breed there. Why? Do they know something that foreign students don’t? After reading this, you might think so.

If you graduate with a good engineering degree, you should think that you will land yourself a job in that profession without too much delay. After all, engineering bosses do complain about the lack of qualified engineers, and you are now qualified. Beware, you’ll be in for a surprise.

What these bosses really mean is that they want everything ready-made brought on a plate to them. They seek experienced engineers above all. And worse, they are not prepared to take on new graduates or inexperienced but qualified engineers. Somehow, they are under the impression that anyone who graduates from university does so with a bagful of experience under their arms.

Reality check: a university is a place of learning; a workplace is where you get experience. If bosses are not prepared to provide experience, they are preposterous in asking for it! Who else will provide that? Where else?

Work placement I hear you suggest. A good solution. Except that they are over-subscribed. Employers this time prefer qualified staff instead, otherwise they will only let you make tea.

Some call it voluntary work and really pay you no penny. If you are the independent student who doesn’t want to really on mummy and daddy’s bank account, you gotta work for yourself and the summer holidays are a great time to do that. How can you pay the bills then if you are going to work for free? Are we really back to slavery with free labour? Fortunately, some are clamping down on this practice. The mighty University of London has decided a while ago to stop advertising unpaid work across all of its colleges and universities unless the employer could justify why it needed this free labour. Way to go.

The recession only intensifies this problem – preposterous bosses demanding experience or free labour. These practices were established well before the current financial crisis made many experienced professionals redundant.

Engineering graduates end up working in other sectors which appreciate their numerical and analytical skills better and also pay better – banks, like them or not, are one of them.

So engineering bosses, where are your qualified engineers? You are right, not so many here; you kicked them all away. Now you are having to rely on foreign workers who qualified and got their experience abroad.

Ready-made, once again…

This is my 2 cents to debate.