Hiring and Retaining Engineers

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by Kami Buchholz, Detroit Editor

The basic engineering principles that make cars go haven't changed over the years. Engineering is like that. On the other hand, the tools used to engineer them, as well as the methods used to build them, have enabled automakers to offer an ever-growing array of sophisticated features. So, depending on how one looks at it, today's car is either a marvel of complexity and refinement, or four wheels and a steering wheel.

Basic and complex at the same time also defines the environment for recruiting automotive engineers. The goal among recruiters is simple: hire the best and brightest engineers available. The complexity is in offering candidates the right package of sophisticated incentives while assuring them that the base product is solid.

The following special report on recruitment focuses on how automotive OEMs and suppliers are approaching the issue at a time when engineers are in short supply. In it, Detroit Editor Kami Buchholz also examines the role of contract engineering firms and takes a look at the growing reliance on engineers from outside the U.S.

Niche engineer shortage
The more complicated vehicle-system design becomes, the harder it is to find specialized engineers. Add a climate of uneven supply/demand for automotive engineers in general, and the search for job candidates resembles a twilight trek through a light-starved obstacle course.

Siemens Automotive brings software factories online.

"There's so much mechanical and electronics engineering overlap with today's high-tech systems that when we can find people with both of those sets of skills, it's fabulous. We don't usually find an engineer with a dual degree in mechanical and electronics as much as we sometimes find an engineer with experience in both disciplines," said Catherine Spevetz, Manager of Human Resources for Siemens Automotive North America.

Knowing that students do not typically take both electronics and mechanical engineering courses, Siemens Automotive became an active proponent in 1996 for creating college curriculum that intertwines electronics and mechanical engineering. Siemens Automotive's push for "mechatronics" education has included specific curriculum suggestions to Stanford Univ. in California as well as chosen universities in Europe.

The need for mechatronics engineers correlates to how differently vehicles are designed today compared to the past decade. "First of all, there wasn't much integration 10 years ago. Mechanical engineers typically did a design independent of electronics, and the electronics engineers tried to design something that would work with mechanical parts. Today, it's a systems approach to design," explained Kregg Wiggins, Siemens Automotive North America Vice President of Powertrain, which supplies electrical-electronic systems and components with applications covering gasoline and diesel powertrain systems.

Freudenberg-NOK engineers work extensively with rubber, plastic, and polytetrafluoroethylene to create an array of automotive components for suspension, electrical, and fuel systems. By the mid-1990s, trying to find specialized engineers was close to a crisis point. "To find anyone that was qualified meant taking an engineer from another company," said Sharon Wenzl, Vice President, Corporate Relations for Freudenberg-NOK.

Wenzl, who is responsible for the recruiting of 600 technical positions for Freudenberg-NOK North America, noted the dire situation led to the company making the lead donation ($250,000) toward establishing the U.S.' first National Elastomer Center at Ferris State Univ. in Big Rapids, MI. Ferris' two-year elastomer technology degree and four-year elastomer engineering technology degree programs began in the fall of 1998.

Freudenberg-NOK continued its support of higher education by donating - together with Unigraphics Solutions - 20 computer-aided design (CAD) workstations, a server, and related software to the Univ. of Massachusetts-Lowell's Plastics Engineering Department in 2000. The company had purchased the CAD workstations in 1995 for nearly $500,000. "Freudenberg-NOK is committed to driving the development of technology and tomorrow's technical specialists. We want to ensure that there is a steady supply of graduates who have practical, hands-on knowledge in the plastics and elastomers industry," stressed Joseph C. Day, Chairman and CEO of Plymouth, MI-based Freuden-berg-NOK. Both of the universities also receive engineering education scholarship monies from the company. "Now we know there are sources to go to with students looking to get into the rubber industry," said Wenzl.

With assistance from companies like Freudenberg-NOK, the Univ. of Massachusetts - Lowell elastomer program is helping to ensure the future of tomorrow's engineers by providing practical, hands-on experience.

Creating college-level courses and programs that meet the automotive industry's engineering needs is but one of the battles faced by the automotive industry. For companies that utilize software engineers, the recruiting net being tossed by nonautomotive industry companies snags many of the highly sought-after computer code programmers.

"The pool is very small, and our theory is it's that way because of the dot.com explosion," said Bruce Johnson, Telematics Group Manager with Microsoft's Automotive Business Unit. About 50 of the 70 people working in the automotive applications group are engineers handling software development and software testing. One method of offsetting the need for additional software engineers is workload sharing. "Our approach is to work with lots of partners. In some cases those partners may contribute code. Then we end up verifying the code," Johnson said.

Siemens Automotive is addressing the increasing demand for software engineers by utilizing 400 engineers around the globe to permit 24-hour software production for powertrain applications. Modular software design means premanufactured software components are selected and assembled to form a complete system via a global people pool. "I simply cannot fill all of my job openings in Michigan, Germany, and France, so I fill them in Romania, China, India, and Mexico. Software factories can be created relatively quickly almost anywhere," Michael Reinfrank, Director, Powertrain Software for Siemens Automotive, noted in a story first appearing in the October issue of Automotive Engineering International.

Bill Pumphrey, President of Lear Electronics and Electrical Division (LEED), pointed out that as the amount of needed software code increases on components and systems, so too does the need for additional software engineers as well as other engineers. "It's been very difficult to recruit," said Pumphrey, adding there is a temptation to recruit overseas. "But that's an expensive undertaking. We certainly don't want to be in a position to have to hire engineers overseas and bring them here (U.S.) because I don't think that's a long-term winning strategy," he said.

Workers with matched culture and language backgrounds are major sways to hiring engineers on a region-to-region basis. LEED occasionally brings overseas engineers into the U.S. for six months to two years of training. "For instance, in order to support Japanese customers in the Asia-Pacific region, we need to have people trained in that region. It also helps to train people on tasks so that we can then use 24-hour-a-day engineering between our global operations," said Pumphrey.

When a company looks for ways to address niche shortages, the result can be good for that business as well as the industry. "We're starting to see a payback," Freudenberg-NOK's Wenzl said about the company's educational-related initiatives. "You need to get rather innovative in a tight job market instead of stealing engineers from one another."