February 3, 2012
During the Detroit auto show, automakers and suppliers unveiled not only cars and technologies, but also expansion plans that will create thousands of jobs. But recruiting top engineers and others to fill those jobs is a challenge.
Santosh Anishetty, head of North American passive safety and advanced driver assistance systems for Continental Automotive Systems Inc. of suburban Detroit, said Continental is struggling to fill more than 150 posted positions.
“It’s not very easy to find people,” he said, adding that recently, “I had three people come for interviews, and all three of them said no after we offered them a job. That never used to be the case.”
Anishetty said suppliers are losing out to startups in the biomedical field and tech companies such as Google Inc. “There are a lot of aspects” as to why they are not choosing auto suppliers, he said. “A quality engineer with eight or 10 years of experience is a king or queen because they are often the most experienced” at their current employer.
And, undoubtedly, many have bitter memories of the brutal job slashing and personal disruption that accompanied the auto sales slump of 2008 and 2009. The more than 300,000 jobs eliminated during the industry downturn caused talent to look elsewhere, said Neil De Koker, CEO of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association in suburban Detroit.
“The bottom line is the sense of security we lost,” he said. “The technically qualified people we lost have joined other parts of the industry, and the question is: How do we get those people back?” And southeast Michigan, often in the news because of Detroit’s economic and social problems, has an image issue, Anishetty said.
Taking the floor
HR managers from Continental and many other suppliers took the floor at the Detroit auto show to recruit potential employees. “The aim was to get on the show floor and network for recruiting purposes,” said Kathryn Blackwell, a Continental spokeswoman. “As we’re increasing, we need to hire more, and we’re doing what we can to recruit.”
Martha Schanno, a recruitment sales manager for SAE International, said despite the concerns about recruitment, more positions are being filled in the automotive and commercial-vehicle sectors. “It’s looking very positive again for this year,” she said of a job fair the organization will host in April.
Schanno has been organizing events to connect employers in the automotive and aerospace industries with job candidates since 2006. She admits that when she began, the organization had more companies looking to hire than it did candidates available. The momentum shifted in 2008-2009, when many engineers were laid off, making for more candidates than companies looking to hire.
But since 2010, she has seen a “great mix” of candidates and companies hiring. “We’ve seen an increase on our job board of new candidates or older ones updating their resumes, but we’ve also seen a lot of new employers on there as well,” she said. “It’s a nice rise on both sides.”
Schanno said many of the positions are in Michigan, though some are in southern states and others yet elsewhere with supplier companies. One
trend she has noticed: employers’ targeting very specific candidates that meet a precise set of qualifications and credentials. “There might be a cry of, ‘We can’t find the talent,’ but it’s almost as if they’re writing such a targeted, niche idea that they’re missing a lot of talent,” Schanno said.
There are about 70,000 jobs—many of which are in the auto industry—on the portal, Snyder said during a stop at the auto show. “If we filled all of those today, we’d drop our unemployment by about two percentage points,” he said.
Expansion plans
The typical automotive engineer earned between $55,955 and $117,916 in 2011, according to Payscale.com. Among the local job expansions announced at the show:
Nissan Motor Co. said it will hire 150 people this year at the Nissan Technical Center North America in suburban Detroit and 60 more in 2013. That’s because Nissan is building more vehicles in the United States, Mexico and Brazil, said Carla Bailo, Nissan Technical Center North America president.
Hyundai America Technical Center Inc. announced a $15 million expansion of its R&D facility, also in suburban Detroit, which will lead to 50 engineering jobs.
Schaeffler Group North America of Fort Mill, SC, said it would hire 1,000 people in 2012, including 150 engineers at its technical centers, including one outside of Detroit.
Denso International America Inc. said it will expand its suburban Detroit headquarters to house labs for battery cooling and in-dash technology engineering. The expansion will create as many as 50 jobs.
Tata Group unveiled its $20,000 electric car at the Detroit auto show designed in part by its engineering staff at its suburban Detroit subsidiary Tata Technologies Inc. Spokesman Daniel Saad said Tata has hired more than 500 employees in metro Detroit and is looking to fill 107 more positions in 2012.
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