Finding, hiring, and retaining the best in emerging engineering talent is a challenge for many companies, large and small. No longer do employees expect to stay with one company throughout their career – a situation becoming even more pronounced with the millennial generation. Considering the extensive costs involved in the hiring process, your organization needs to do whatever it takes to retain its top employees.

Knowing what the top engineering talent is looking for in regards to their careers helps your organization in its attempts to retain those important workers. Let’s take a closer look.

Not Every Engineer Wants to Work at a Big Company

Many tech pundits like to talk about how Facebook, Apple, and Google dominate when it comes to hiring the best engineering graduates in Silicon Valley. However, not every engineer wants to merely be a cog in a very large wheel. If your company is growing and offers a chance for a new engineer to make a meaningful difference, your organization stands a great shot of convincing them to become an employee.

If stock options are a part of your company’s compensation package, some of the best available engineering talent will jump at the chance to contribute to your company’s success – and potentially their own. This early chance for both professional and financial accomplishment makes many newer engineering graduates look at small and medium-sized companies soon after graduation. The bottom line for your company is to offer your engineers interesting project work and to generously reward success.

Flat Company Structures Allow for More Chances to Contribute

If your company is organized in a flat hierarchical structure, this fosters collaboration between different areas of your company, allowing engineers to offer input in a variety of areas and giving them a better chance to contribute. This is another advantage smaller firms hold over their larger brethren. Many top engineers want to work in an office known for collaboration and camaraderie. Offer them that chance if you want to employ and retain the best and brightest.

So not all of the top engineers want to work for the Apples of the world. Building a positive corporate culture at your company – one that emphasizes teamwork and honesty – goes a long way in attracting talent to your firm. Additionally, make sure to offer a copious amount of interesting projects and to reward success on both a financial and professional basis, and you’ll have no problem in building a top notch engineering team.

If your company needs additional insight on hiring the most talented engineers, talk to the experts at The Talley Group. As one of the top engineering staffing agencies in the country, we also are a great source for Seattle engineering jobs. Schedule some time with us today!

Even with the recent downturn in the oil and gas industry, petroleum engineers remain an in-demand occupation. Boom and bust cycles are a definitely a part of the industry, and the duties of an oil engineer are vital no matter the latest economic news. In many cases, petroleum engineers are performing the necessary site engineering work years before a drilling location produces oil or gas.

Petroleum engineers are only one engineering discipline currently in demand in the marketplace. So, no matter your specific area of expertise, this is a great time to be an engineer. Let’s look more closely at the current market.

Good Engineers Remain Difficult to Find

According to a recent employment industry analytics study, petroleum engineers ranked among the 10 most engineering occupations that are the most difficult to fill. In short, if you are an engineer working in the oil and gas industry, rest assured that you are in demand. On the other hand, recruiters looking for qualified petroleum engineers know that finding quality candidates can be a challenging process.

The most in-demand engineering occupations include human factors engineers and ergonomists, industrial engineers, industrial safety and health engineers, as well as fire prevention and protection engineers. Other disciplines ranking on the employment analytics study with petroleum engineers include traditional positions in the field, such as mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, mining engineers, and chemical engineers.

Once again, it is important to note that the engineering profession tends to be more immune to economic downturns than other occupations. So, if you are interested in entering this field or furthering your engineering career, understand that chances are good your skill set will stay in demand.

Demand for Oil and Gas Engineering Continues to Grow

When the U.S. Congress failed to approve the Keystone XL pipeline late last year, some felt that petroleum engineering employment would suffer as a result. However, the data simply does not support that conclusion.

The same analytics firm that released the study referenced earlier noted that there were 12.5 percent more open positions in the mining and oil and gas sectors in late 2014 compared to the previous year. The need for quality candidates at oil and gas companies were greatest in the entire energy extraction industry, with up to nearly 50 percent of open positions being from firms in that sector.

In short, now is a good time to be a petroleum engineer. Additionally, companies looking for quality candidates in this discipline need to partner with a staffing agency experienced in the field.

When searching for a top ranked staffing company in the world of engineering, look no further than The Talley Group. As one of the top engineering employment agencies in Washington State, we are also a great source for Seattle engineering jobs. So if you are a petroleum engineer looking for a challenging new position, or oil extraction firm hoping to find a perfect candidate, make it a point to schedule some time with us as soon as possible.

While nuclear power has the potential to solve many of the nation’s energy challenges, the risks are still wide-ranging. The disasters at the Japanese Fukushima reactor, the Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl still strike fear in many of the people responsible for making decisions on our energy future.

Nuclear engineers remain hard at work researching ways to make nuclear energy safer and a relevant part of any energy policy. They continue to apply the lessons learned at Fukushima and Chernobyl.

Engineers Devise System to Clean Contaminated Fukushima Water

A collection of engineers from the Washington-based company, AECOM, designed a system that helped to clean the contaminated water used to cool the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant. Kurion, the California company responsible for the project, choose AECOM to perform the engineering portion of the work.

They were able to design, build, and ship the system to Japan in five weeks; a similar project after Three-Mile Island took nearly 18 months to fully implement. Within the year after the tsunami hit the power plant, the Kurion system has cleaned over 36 million gallons of contaminated water.

Oregon State Engineers Develop a Nuclear Reactor that can’t Meltdown

The engineering students at Oregon State University developed a reactor they believe won’t meltdown, with the added benefit of a 30-40 percent improvement in energy output resulting in only half as much radioactive waste.

“You can’t get the thing hot enough to melt the core down so you’re really limiting the potential for these types of traumatic accidents that we’ve seen in the past with nuclear power,” said Brian Woods, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at OSU. Woods hopes the technology reaches a marketable state within the next 20 to 30 years.

Engineers once again prove that their innovation and ingenuity can make the world a better place. Do you want to improve the world through your engineering career? Talk the people at The Talley Group; they are one of the leading engineering staffing companies in the Seattle area, and they can help you reach your career goals.