Specialist recruiter Randstad looked at changes in the ratios of vacancies to applications for jobs in the UK’s engineering sector – using the volume of applications as a proxy for candidate volumes – across the UK’s engineering workforce.
In the first half of 2020, Randstad said they had 17 applications for every engineering sector job advertised. In H1 2021, this ratio fell to four applications per job.
But the change has not been driven by a collapse in candidate numbers.
Randstad says that, while the number of applications for engineering sector roles were essentially flat, the number of vacancies rose by more than 200 percent.
Paul Conway, Senior Director of Operations at Randstad UK said,
“There are staff shortages across the developed world, including the UK. In the US, lower paid workers are seeing bigger wage increases than highly paid people – for the first time in 30 years. Germany is short of 60,000 lorry drivers. The construction industry is struggling to fill jobs, in Ireland of all places.
“So, we don’t think the labour shortages we are seeing in the UK's engineering sector are not, on the whole, being driven by a dearth of EU labour in the face of Brexit. The UK’s settlement scheme for residents of the EU had, by the end of May, received more than 5.6 million applications. And at that point the programme still had
a month to go – the ‘Brexodus’ hasn’t played out as we feared.
“Essentially, this is not, primarily, about a constriction in the supply of labour. Workers are back in power because of the success of the vaccine rollout and the removal of lockdown restrictions and the resulting economic bounce back.”
Advice to engineering employers looking to navigate the labour shortage
Randstad says that agile employers need to adapt to secure their first choice of candidate. Paul Conway said, “The end of furlough should unlock a chunk of the labour supply but it won’t solve the labour shortage problems overnight.
“The first thing to do is re-evaluate your asking salaries and hourly rates. Are they realistic
given the amount of hiring going on? Perhaps not. We have seen the average salary of a Marketing Assistant in the North West rise by as much as 18 percent in the last 12 months. At the start of the summer, we were seeing the average pay packet for construction workers up by 14 percent compared to the same time last year. Goldman Sachs is now offering graduates starting packages of £100,000 a year in the UK. Engineering firms are not, somehow, immune from these sorts of market forces.
“Second, if you find the right person, move fast – much faster than you would have done two years ago. There are so many organisations looking to
hire right now that, if you move slowly, you will miss out on the best people.
"Third, if you’re hiring office workers, rather than people on site, use remote working to widen your candidate pool. Employers who demand people come into the office are now missing out on candidates to a degree that didn't happen before the pandemic. This change should go hand in hand with a re-examination of your wider benefits package in line with your competitors. Top of the list for workers at the moment is more flexibility.
“Lastly, consider making more use of contractors and temporary staff, rather than focusing solely on permanent hires. While the costs aren't all that different, casting the net wider can help you secure a candidate who really fits the bill.”