Are There Too Many Engineers?

One executive recently asked us, “Are there too many engineers?”

He was expressing his demoralized feeling because whenever he applied for an engineering job he was not selected.  He apparently felt that perhaps there are simply too many engineers out there competing for too few opportunities.  Mind you, we are talking about executives with an engineering specialty, not junior positions.

Well, there are certainly industries that are experiencing radical changes in the demand for talent.  Take the automotive sector where drive trains are undergoing huge changes as capacity shifts from internal combustion to electric power.  Energy, too, is transitioning through enormous upheaval as alternative energy and batteries continually take share from fossil fuels. This has enormous implications for the engineering talent required to make it all work.

Nevertheless, there are not too many engineers it seems, but far too few.

Much of the engineering gap expected in the US over the next ten years will involve unfilled positions in software, industrial, civil, and electrical engineering, amounting to a staggering 186,000 job vacancies across the US by 2031.  [See source.]

In our view, the issue is not the lack of opportunity but more the lack of understanding about how to discover those interesting executive opportunities whether in engineering or any other sector before everyone else does.  At The Barrett Group (TBG) we have made it a corner stone  of our tried-and-true methodology over the last three decades to help clients uncover those gems in the so-called unpublished market. The unpublished market is where fully 75% of our clients land valuable executive roles with higher compensation and little competition.

But let’s stick with engineering for a moment.  Executives citing engineering as a specialization number more than 300,000 in the US, Canadian, EU, UK, and Middle Eastern markets our clients typically target.  They are divided about evenly with about 140,000 each in the US and Canada versus the EU and UK.  The Middle East rounds this out with another almost 30,000 positions.  This engineering executive market has grown by 5% in the past year with a further five thousand changing positions. So, the total executive opportunity in this industry comes in at about 20,000 executive positions being either newly created or changing hands per year.  [Interested in other industries, too?  Read A World of Executive Opportunity.]

By the way, each of our clients is supported by a six-member team of professionals. This includes a researcher who can provide significantly more granular data than we can address here in this blog, whether at the initial industry screening stage or as our clients prepare for high-level interviews and want to know more about the target company.

If we continue the examination of engineering executives, you may want to know in which industries they are principally employed.   Chart 1 summarizes the top industries employing executive engineers.  By way of explanation, take Construction. This industry employs about 30,000 engineering execs, a total that has grown by about 8% in the past year, but that forecasts relatively low hiring demand going forward (per LinkedIn).  Contrast that with Environmental Services, for example, (+23.3% growth and forecasted high hiring demand) or Defense and Space Manufacturing (+25.7% growth and forecasted very high hiring demand).

Clearly, some sectors look more promising than others.  This is the sort of insight that a TBG client receives from our research services.  Naturally, executive clients would then want to know who is doing all this hiring.  Chart 2 offers some insight into the companies with the fastest growth in the hiring of executive engineers.

Remember, these are not the largest employers but those that are growing the fastest.  Interestingly, the demand is broad-based in terms of business activity spanning Construction to Renewable Energy, and Aviation & Aerospace.  TBG helps executives move smoothly from one industry or role to another by marshaling their transferable skills and experience, repackaging the candidate accordingly, and then assisting them in telling their stories effectively.

Here are just a few of our past clients in this industry telling their success stories (click the name to read more):

• Cameron Carnegie – President, Aircraft Conceptual Design Consultant 
• Derek Maxwell – Senior Manager of Engineering & Supply Chain
• Arturo Núñez – Domain Expert Director
• Alisa Preston – Director of Underwater Technology Resources

And here is how one engineering executive client summed up his TBG experience:

…from the very beginning, it was clear to me that people at The Barrett Group know a lot more than I do about job seeking. I soon realized that I hadn’t been using all the avenues available to me to make my job search as successful as it could be. [Manan – Director of Quality Systems Engineering]

Where is all of this opportunity?  Chart 3 breaks down the top locations for engineering executives with the surprising finding that New York is NOT the top city for a change.  London is!   As usual, the rate of growth (Change YOY) spotlights a number of locations, but, for example, while Saudi Arabia’s engineering executive headcount grew by 12.3% in the period, the forecast for further growth is lower, coming in at “moderate”.  Compare that to Houston, for example, that grew by only 2.4% but forecasts “very high” hiring demand going forward.

In any case, the opportunity is also broad and deep.

As in all other industries, the real question is how can you find that position before someone else does.  The simplest answer is to hire The Barrett Group.  That’s what we do for our clients, and have done for more than 30 years.  Ask Forbes, for example, who have again rated us among the best in the business for a fifth year running.  Or check out our Frontline Reports where we report on our clients’ successes every week.

Above all, don’t let your job search frustrations hold you back.  We can help.  Give us a call.