How having the right test equipment at an affordable cost can help small and medium sized companies recruit the best young engineers.
There is a shortage of good engineers in EMEA, and the young engineers coming out of colleges and universities know this and gravitate towards the big name companies. Smaller companies, even though they may be working on large projects, often find it hard to attract the best people.
I came across this problem when dealing with a medium-sized engineering company in Europe. The firm provides small satellites, space mechanisms and structures, and instruments and facilities for micro gravity research on manned and unmanned space missions.
With many young engineers dreaming about working on space projects, I assumed that the company would have no problem at all attracting engineers. But this was not the case. Because it was not widely known, it found itself fighting over the top engineers with larger organisations.
As such, the bosses at the company started looking for ways to make their workplace a more attractive prospect for a new engineer. The budget was limited so they could not throw vast amounts of money at the problem, either in large salaries or expensive equipment that would tempt new recruits. Plus, the company only took on a new graduate now and again, a factor that made it even more important to find the right person.
Test equipment
However, one difficulty many young engineers face when they join a company is a shortage of dedicated test equipment. Typically, they have to share test equipment with the more experienced engineers or even have to book time on the equipment. Buying them their own equipment is often too expensive. A new 26GHz high-end spectrum analyser, for example, can easily cost in the region of £45,000, and having one of those per person is a large chunk of the budget.
The space company had a policy of its capital expenditure budget being allocated per project per year and, though junior engineers were contracted to work on these projects, they found it difficult to defend such large investments for a product the engineer was not going to be using all the time.
This is not uncommon. Small engineering companies come up against this regularly where their new engineers are not given access to a lot of test equipment. A spectrum analyser each almost never happens.
Yet for the engineers it can be more fun in their jobs if they can test projects as they go along. They are also more efficient when they are trying out new ideas. They have not got the experience to work an idea through and do not want to have to wait until test equipment comes free to test their ideas. But if they could have easy access to the test equipment, it would boost their efficiency on the project and take away a lot of theoretical mistakes.
For example, with the test equipment on hand, they can experiment. On a mathematical model, they can put in ridiculous values to see what would happen, but they cannot do that in the real world. Having the test equipment handy lets them carry out this kind of experimentation as they go along, thus boosting their productivity. They also learn and improve at a faster rate if they have the means to check what they are doing.
Having their own equipment also helps overcome an understandable shyness about having to keep asking more experienced colleagues to borrow their equipment.
Alternative
All this is why having a dedicated test instrument for a young engineer can be a good investment. But for smaller enterprises, that £45,000 for a spectrum analyser is a lot of money. However, the young engineer is often just checking the basics for which he or she does not require a brand-new top end analyser. This is especially true when working in the RF domain where the latest equipment offers few advantages, yet the basics still have to be learned.
The space company I mentioned took the decision to look at the used equipment market and approached Electro Rent Europe. Here, the bosses found that they could spend £13,970 on a 26GHz spectrum analyser. Using the Flex Term service, this investment could be spread over two years, resulting at just £582 per month, well within the budget for the project.
The company tried this with a new engineer a few years ago and was so impressed that this has now become standard policy whenever an engineer is hired. This does not lead to them having more applicants when they enter a recruiting round but it does make it easier to convince the applicants they do get that the company is a worthwhile employer.
Conclusion
Attracting the best engineers during a shortage can be difficult for small and medium sized companies. But rather than throwing a lot of money at the problem, it is better to give them access to equipment that makes their job more enjoyable and productive. And by going to the used equipment market and spreading the payments, this can be far less expensive than many imagine. Good test equipment can be made available at just a small outlay per month.
As the small European space company has found, for a negligible impact on budget, it can now compete with some of the larger players when it comes to recruiting the latest engineers. Once recruited, the young engineers become more productive and learn their trade much more quickly. And these factors can be critical for any small and medium enterprise for without the new blood with their new ideas the way forward can be tricky to say the least.
By André Vandenberk, Sales Operations Manager, Electro Rent EMEA
