Hardly to become satiable any time soon, the global labour market has been hungry for qualified IT specialists for quite some time now. Meanwhile, amidst the fierce competition for the aforementioned professionals, industry experts are increasingly voicing their concerns over the potential talent gap in yet another sector – the one of industrial technologies.
Although the list of the so called prestigious professions continues to comprise various occupations in the fields of Politics, Law and Economics, guaranteed employment immediately after graduation is something that only few newly produced specialists can expect. In the meantime, multiple companies operating in the field of industrial technologies are increasingly struggling to attract a sufficient amount of new talent. Why? According to the Dean of the KTU faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEF) prof. Algimantas Valinevicius, the answer is quite simple: most high school students are simply unaware of the endless opportunities offered by this high-tech industry.
“The field of IT has finally managed to communicate the growing demand for future specialists, as more and more high school graduates all over the world choose to apply for studies in programming. Still, it is hard to predict the day that the HR gap in IT shall be fully filled. However, what many potential students do not know is the fact that such degree programmes as Electrical Energy Systems also prepare qualified systems programmers, who are in as high a demand as IT specialists, if not higher,” shared prof. A.Valinevicius.
According to the head of Energy Systems Department at the KTU EEF prof. Saulius Gudzius, every year the department receives a large number of enquiries with regard to electrical energy systems specialists from multiple local and foreign companies. “Those companies are mainly interested in offering internships, but the majority of them employ our students straight after the placements are over. In fact, in their fourth year of studies around 80 per cent of these students already have full time jobs according to their profession,” commented prof. S.Gudzius.
The Lithuanian sector of Energetics currently employs over 10 thousand specialists. The yearly fluctuation of manpower in the field is around 10 per cent, so seeking to attract the best engineering personnel companies offer salaries starting at EUR 1000 for recent graduates and exceeding EUR 5000 for managerial staff.
And this is far from a local trend observed in Lithuania or other Baltic states. In the UK alone, based on the search results of such prominent HR platforms as Indeed.co.uk and Jobrapido.com, the current demand for specialists in electrical engineering tops 25 thousand.
“Considering the multitude of strategic projects in the field of energetics currently under implementation in Lithuania as well as the global initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions worldwide, the relevance of electrical energetics is highly unlikely to decrease any time soon. Therefore, the increasing lack of appropriately trained specialists in the field is not only a local, but also a global problem. The process of integrating intelligent networks, microgrids and renewable energy sources as well as the development of large energy systems are unimaginable without the highly trained professionals. Therefore, we must take action ASAP, otherwise one day the world may simply end up without electricity,” commented the head of the Electrical Energy Systems study programme Assoc. prof. Andrius Jonaitis.
