UK faces engineers’ crunch, finds study

United Kingdom firms are facing a major crisis as there is huge crunch of qualified engineers, finds a recent survey conducted by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). This is despite UK producing close to 25,000 engineers every year. IET carries out annual surveys of businesses to gauge the state of skills in the engineering and technology sector. “This  survey is the seventh survey in the series and indicates that for the first time since the recession, companies have the confidence to expand their engineering workforce in the medium term,” says Stephanie Fernandes, IET principal policy advisor for education and skills.

According to the IET Skill Survey, the second recession which has hit the UK economy has not affected organisations in the UK as badly as it did during 2008. And therefore companies are surely looking to recruit this time around “The planned recruitment is clearly good news, suggesting increased confidence in the economic outlook, but if firms are unable to fill their vacancies the economy will continue to shrink,” says Fernandes. She adds that the challenge for government, academia and industry is to ensure that this demand attracts more people through technical training into engineering.

According to the study, more than a third of respondents said that new engineering, IT and technical recruits do not meet reasonable expectations for levels of skills. “The biggest skills gap amongst new recruits was reported to be a lack of practical experience, especially amongst graduate employees,” says Fernandes.

— susmita@newindianexpress.com