Engineering Shortage

A developer of touch-screen technology, has been puzzling since November over how to fill a couple of engineer openings. Besides the more traditional avenues of career fairs, staffing companies, college recruiting and online want ads, the Brown Deer, Wis., company has been making classroom presentations to engineering student clubs and calling human resources departments that might be laying off engineers. "I used all of my linked in and Gmail networks," said Carol Crawford, Hampshire's General Manager.

At the Milwaukee School of Engineering, more sen iors are weighing multiple job offers and more employers are willing to cross-train the students they hire. The school expects its biggest graduating class in memory next month - 322 new engineers. But it's not enough.

"That's a big class," said Mary Spencer, Placement Director. "However, it doesn't meet the needs of all the employers." No surprise to Spencer or to Crawford, engineers top the latest list of "Hardest Jobs to Fill" released by Manpower Inc.

The third annual employer survey shows a growing mismatch between the skills that businesses are wanting and what jobseekers possess. Besides highlighting intense demand for specific occupations, the list underscores broader concerns over a looming retirement boom and a thin bench of replacements.

"A lot of these positions are careers held by baby boomers, or the older generation, and they're retiring," said Melanie Holmes, Vice President of World of Work Solutions for Manpower North America. "These are not positions necessarily that young people are going into, and I think that's one thing that we're seeing here that people are retiring, and young people are not going into these things."

To generate interest in engineering, more employers, educators and professional groups are reaching out to children through collaborative programmes. Meantime, demand for engineers is outrunning the supply. "They are problem-solvers by nature and they are technologysavvy by training," explained Ronald Perez, Interim Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.