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Truth be told, I saw it coming two years ago.
I would like to say, “I’m smart and a visionary”, but that’s not quite the truth, my school report cards and uni results will attest to the fact I’m that I’m not that bright.
I do try hard though, I have got a good memory, and have been in at least three significantly major engineering and construction booms in different markets around the world over the last 12 years.
A good majority of the engineers who were in Australia and facilitated our last resources boom felt it necessary to relocate back home to Ireland or England and New Zealand, or head to the UAE market, due to lack of local work post-boom.
The beloved 457s of the mining boom, that were our saviours at the time, quickly become the pariahs of the industry, unwanted and unloved.
For a while, lack of work in the Australian market got so bad we were doing a roaring trade placing Australian engineers and construction professionals into the New Zealand market – and that was not even with us seeking them out. They came to us. Supply overpowered demand.
But things have changed. The work is back!
If you advertise on Seek, or have job slots on LinkedIn (yes, we do and we have), you will note that when you advertise your jobs, 95% (is that being kind? Should it be 98%) of the applications received are irrelevant (by a factor x 100) for assorted reasons, ie the site engineer who applies for the Project Managers role, the Project Manager who applies for the Site Engineer role, the welder who applies for the Planners role, and the list goes on, and on.
Then job seekers constantly complain on forums, such as LinkedIn, that they don’t get a call back from recruiters after submitting their application (no doubt I have just opened myself up for some recruiter bashing – bring it on, I have thick skin, I am the youngest of three brothers and didn’t answer to my real name until I was 18! I’m impervious to criticism and taunts – but give it a go if you feel the need!).
In the local market, demand has already outstripped supply, and we are only “lukewarm”, still a long way to “red hot”, we are only at the meagre Shivalik Hills in Nepal on the trek to the summit of Mount Everest, we have only just sat down and ordered a bottle of wine and a bottle of sparkling water before a 12-course degustation menu at a fancy restaurant.
I think you get the picture.
We don’t have the silver bullet, I don’t think anyone has.
But we did start putting things in motion about two years ago to be ready to resource the impending boom.
To resource the market ahead, you must be creative, have many channels at work, work smart, and also work hard to make it a success. Who knows if our strategies will work? We need to get a lot of things right for them to work. But as I said before, I’ve got a good memory, I know what’s worked in the past, we’ve been at it a while, we put some creative twists on a few of our pasts tricks… so fingers crossed.
Those who have done the same should reap the benefits, those who haven’t better start now, as they say, “it’s never too late”.
Good luck and make sure you have some fun along the way.
Our Founder and Director Peter Laver is a degree qualified Surveyor who gained over eight years of extensive surveying and civil engineering experience in Australia and the UK before transitioning into recruitment.
Also by Peter Laver:
https://www.consultanz.com.au/brave-new-world/
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