Engineering firms have been urged by a senior recruitment figure to stop “finger pointing” and come up with constructive ways of solving the skills crisis.
The Association for Consultancy and Engineering, which represents several large employers in the sector, last week saidrecruitment firms poached staff, and were not helping to solve the sector’s critical skills shortages.
It published a report which found that more than four in five engineering firms believed recruitment agencies offered an ‘average’ or ‘poor’ service.
But Keith Gallagher, managing director of Roevin – the technical and engineering arm of recruitment giant Adecco – said the report was unhelpful.
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“Obviously we take the concerns and issues raised by this report very seriously,” he said. “That there is a major skills shortage facing the industry is irrefutable. What is equally true, however, is that everyone involved in the industry has a part to play.
“Hopefully we can move beyond the finger-pointing aspects of this report, and instead spark some constructive dialogue across the sector about how we work together to ensure that the future of the industry is safeguarded.”
