The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced Friday morning that nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 173,000. This monthly report was more significant than usual for several reasons:
- It marked the last jobs accounting before Labor Day, which is historically a special time for all workers.
- It was the 59th straight month of jobs creation.
- It was the last jobs report before Federal Reserve officials meet later this month to debate a potential interest-rate hike, which would be the first rate increase for the U.S. since 2006.
- Overall jobs creation fell well short of the 220,000 predicted by most economists.
- It ended a streak of 16 out of the last 17 months where 200,000 or more new jobs were created.
Technical And Engineering Still Increasingly Scarce
Despite BLS citing declines in some areas, such as manufacturing and mining, demand for skilled technical and engineering talent continues to far exceed supply. This has caused problems for many engineering recruitment and technical recruitment teams. Recent statistics from the Labor Department confirm across-the-board talent shortages. But these are particularly acute for engineering and technical jobs.
Unfilled Technical And Engineering Jobs Lower Sales, Profits and Productivity!
Anecdotally, our engineering and technical recruiters have seen a major uptick in engineering and technical recruiting over the past 10 months. Leading technology companies are fueling this increased engineering and technical recruitment drive. Unfortunately, when key technical and engineering jobs go unfilled, this has greater impact on companies than other types of positions. As a result, sales, profits and productivity suffer more dramatically. These engineering and technical vacancies create a lot more stress on the existing engineering and technical talent. As a result, engineering and technical departments often miss important project goals, which in turn reduce company sales and profits.
Technical And Engineering Recruitment Solution
One solution both our engineering recruitment and technical recruiting divisions can offer you is our 4th Commandment of Technical Recruiting. To view this key recruiting tip, please click on #4 after visiting this link.
You may recall that in the past I have recommended open-ended questions to elicit more information during your engineering and technical recruiting process. This commandment focuses on the open-ended question, “what does that mean?” You should include this as an integral part of your engineering and technical recruitment processes. By asking open-ended questions like this and carefully listening to the engineering or technical recruitment candidate’s responses, you will gain more information from your candidates. You will also streamline your recruiting process by more quickly “separating the wheat from the chaff” during technical and engineering interviews.
The two key points here are: 1) asking open-ended questions such as “what does that mean?” and 2) carefully listening. This will go miles in helping you hire the right engineering talent during this increasing engineering recruitment war.
To learn more on how Strategic Search Corporation can provide you the right solutions for both your engineering and technical recruiting needs.
What tools can you share that have helped your engineering or technical recruiting process?
