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A survey conducted by Indeed found that 86% of hiring managers and recruiters believe it's challenging to find and hire engineering services candidates.

According to a report from Korn Ferry, more than 85 million jobs will go unfilled in the USA because there are not enough skilled people to take them. Engineering services shortage is one of the biggest challenges that many companies would face in the coming years.

With a national unemployment rate of 3.6%, hiring for any position is challenging, especially for a technical position. A survey conducted by Indeed found that 86% of hiring managers and recruiters believe it's challenging to find and hire engineering services candidates.

This article will try to highlight a few staffing challenges recruitment agencies face while hiring engineering services candidates.

It is incredibly disappointing when an engineering candidate declines your offer after putting time and effort into interviewing them. Unfortunately, this is often the case in today's competitive market.

Lengthy Hiring Process

With rapid changes in work culture and customer needs, finding engineering services candidates is becoming more complex. Moreover, hiring for an engineering resource takes an average of 66 days which is more than the usual hiring process.

According to iCIMS, only six positions are filled for every ten open positions, further complicating the hiring process and taking longer than usual. Despite the increasing number of applicants for open positions, these are a few top reasons for the engineering services shortage in the USA.

• Lack of advanced skill: Employees are reluctant to upscale their work skills.
• Gender gap: In any industry, out of 28% of all engineering services graduates, only 24% of women are hired.
• Lack Of Qualified Candidates: It is difficult for companies to find qualified engineering applicants.

High competition, lack of information, saturated market, and homogenous pool of candidates also incorporate a few challenges that hiring managers face in engineering services.

Below we have added a few more challenges that the staffing industry faces while hiring engineering services candidates.

Gender Problem

Despite increased awareness and support for change, companies, and organizations throughout the sector, there is still a lack of gender diversity in engineering services. Researches found that only 25.4% of girls aged 16-18 consider a career in engineering, compared to 51.9% of boys. However, by the time students reach higher education, only 16% choose engineering as their subject.

With the shortfall of graduates costing the USA economy, and increased demand for skilled workers, it's becoming more critical for companies to invest in initiatives that will encourage the next generation of women to pursue a career in engineering.

Labor From Developing Countries

The engineering services outsourcing for the USA market growth comes from the offshore segment. The labor cost is very high in developed countries, such as the US and countries in Europe. Hence, organizations of these countries generally prefer outsourcing their engineering services to offshore destinations, such as India, Indonesia, China, Malaysia, which can provide a favorable IP environment and highly skilled workforce at low cost. It also provides better opportunities for customer organizations to boost their popularity of offshore engineering services outsourcing.

Lack Of Knowledge About New Technology

The increasing popularity and adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) across the globe is the latest trend in organizations. Internet of things (IoT) is a system of inter-related devices enabling the transmission of data over a wide range of networks. Engineering service providers increasingly use industrial IoT to improve and optimize their production process with better energy usage, resource allocation, and asset management. However, the lack of knowledge in new technologies is hindering companies from hiring engineering services candidates.

Staffing managers are facing challenges in hiring a candidate with in-depth knowledge during the sourcing stage. Also, recruiters often miss out on great engineers because they have a nontraditional background, creating a missed opportunity for employers.

Lack Of Quality And Safety

Lack of quality control and safety concerns of engineering firms are hindering the engineering services market growth. Defects or failures in construction activities result in high costs, and these minor defects result in re-construction to make the facility operations impaired. Due to increased costs and delays result in ineffective internal controls and safety measures, engineering firms need to figure out a way to land these engineers. Some firms are reluctant to pay employees more because they don't have the budget or don't want to in general.

Homogeneous Pool Of Candidates

Today, engineers don't need a degree from a big-league school for an engineering position. On-the-job training and experience, skill-set certification, boot camps, short-term training are a few skills required for many open positions. Unfortunately, recruiters quickly screen out candidates with nontraditional or unconventional backgrounds, leading to missing out on great candidates. It leads to a homogenous group of more traditional candidates, making it challenging for employers to hire the best fit.

Wrapping Up

In this fast-paced hiring environment, it is a real struggle for some companies to find the employees that they need. Often, companies turn to recruitment agencies for a little extra help. However, when you need to get a qualified engineer on-boarded ASAP, it might be time to step things up a notch.

Staffing agencies in the USA must look for a vast talent pool to contact when a job becomes available. Keeping in mind, the above challenges will help agencies to look beyond candidate's profiles and search for the best.

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Written By:
Nivedita Nayak
Content Writer, Aviskaran Technologies