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!

Making solar power more efficient, and therefore more cost effective, is a vital goal currently being worked on by engineers throughout the industry. In this era of climate change, finding ways to lessen the carbon footprint caused by power generation offers potential hope for a better planet. The prospect of generating more of our electricity from renewable sources like solar, wind, and water is a goal shared by many engineers.

Scientists at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) are working on a system that uses lasers to improve the efficiency of the individual solar cells used in solar power arrays. This promising research might revolutionize the industry and make solar power a viable economic option for widespread power generation. Let’s take a closer look.

Using Lasers to Transform Silicon

A*STAR’s research is focused on the effects produced by a laser when processing silicon solar cells. Scientists noted that laser processing creates rippling in the silicon. In short, this rippling decreases the reflectivity of the silicon, allowing the resultant solar cells to absorb more sunlight.

A uniform nanoscale ripple pattern etched on solar cell silicon and using a femtosecond laser beam offers researchers the chance to make a breakthrough compared to earlier efforts where the pattern wasn’t deep enough to significantly affect the silicon’s reflectivity. Laser processing generally leaves the internal structure of the silicon unchanged, but the use of the femtosecond laser made the vital difference when it comes to the deepness of the etched ripples.

Xincai Wang, a scientist with A*STAR commented on his team’s efforts. “This increase in depth can substantially reduce light reflection and improve the light-trapping ability of the ripple structure. Hence, if the structure is used in photovoltaic devices, more light will be trapped within the structure, thereby enhancing the device efficiency,” said Wang.

Deeper Ripples at the Scale of Nanometers

A*STAR’s team etched ripples 300 nanometers deep using the new technique with the femtosecond laser. That distance is three times deeper than their previous attempts. Most importantly, this method is relatively simple and inexpensive, which raises the hope for easy adoption of the technology once it is commercialized.

These ripples make a significant difference in the reflectivity of the silicon – dropping it from 39.7 percent to 12.5 percent. Light absorption of the material improved by a factor of 41 percent. In addition to the world of solar power, A*STAR’s research may also impact the light emitting diode (LED) industry.

If these kinds of research innovations inspire you to further your engineering career, talk to the experts at The Talley Group. As one of the foremost engineering staffing agencies in Washington State, we are also a great source for the best Seattle engineering jobs. Schedule some time with us at your earliest convenience.