Insights

Why the green economy is powering IT jobs in engineering

Engineering is typically viewed as a painfully slow-moving dinosaur. In reality, engineering is always at the cutting edge. It’s through engineering that the green economy is possible. Without engineers, the green economy couldn’t and wouldn’t develop.

The National Geographic lists clean car engineers amongst the 11 fastest growing green jobs. However, by narrowly focusing on engineering skill alone, we’re missing the fact that actually, the type of people we need don’t even really have job titles yet. Green engineering jobs are only in their infancy and we limit ourselves by defining them by a name.

Instead, we need to look to the skills that are needed to empower engineering at the forefront of the green economy. In addition, we need to understand that this isn’t some sub-niche of the global jobs market and economy. Looking to the green landscape we’re actually simply looking at the jobs landscape in general. And in the post-Covid world, we really need to understand where the opportunities lie.

The green recruitment market

As we say, engineering is at the forefront of developments in the green economy. If we look at the principles of the green economy, it’s impossible to imagine this world without engineering providing the solutions.

It is engineers that come up with low-carbon and resource-efficient solutions. They can see the environmental risks as a ‘problem’ and engineer the solution. They engineer the route to sustainability. We see this in a plethora of ways from the solar energy engineer through to the sustainable architect.

However, this narrow viewpoint overlooks the skills that the next generation of engineering businesses will need in order to develop things such as electrical vehicles or solar or wind power beyond where they are today. Behind the engineering, and critical to its full potential, are IT experts.

IT skills are going to be increasingly in demand within engineering, in order to move forwards with the green economy. If we take the electric vehicle alone as an example, we can see that from autonomy drive capabilities to mechatronics, IT is, quite literally, the driving force. Without the IT capabilities, the engineering skill becomes meaningless.

How to find the skills engineering in the green economy needs

Talent pipelining looks at strategically developing the skills you need for the future. It’s not limited to job titles or pre-existing roles. In this instance, talent pipelining needs to consciously understand the connection between those with IT skills today and the success of engineering businesses in the future. We need to develop greater IT skills within our existing engineers, and we need to convince those with existing IT skills to move over into the engineering industry.

The good news is that future generations are already on board. For example, The Engineer has reported that 57% of young people would prefer to work for an environmentally sustainable business. The drive is there.

However, the nature of this talent acquisition and talent pipelining is far from straight forward. Whenever you look to bring on board skills from across sectors and seek to deep-root it within a large and cumbersome industry, it’s a tall order. It requires specialist insight into the situation, and it requires a concerted effort.

But bear in mind, engineering firms won’t even be able to select the right technology for the future if they don’t have IT specialists within engineering. Without IT experts in everything from chatbots to artificial intelligence, engineering businesses will fail to develop the green solutions that are at the cornerstone of their future.

To be fair, it’s pretty enormous disruption in the field of engineering talent acquisition and pipelining.

That’s where our talent mapping and talent pipelining services converge with our unrivalled executive search. It’s with us that you can plan for the future of what you need and make sure you get it. We can help you get the IT talent that you need within engineering. Click ‘Speak to an expert’ and we’ll talk you through your options.