I started Enjen Solutions and my role involves the growth; strategy, training and support to the business and to create an environment the team are happy in, and encourages progress within themselves and their careers.

Factory Automation sector feels close to home for me. When I was a kid, I used to go skateboarding around the factory, and help out all the staff on the different production lines – not sure health and safety was enforced back then!

I have learned a few, what you put in is what you get out, and this also applies to every part of your life. I have also learnt that good things come to positive minds, and the valueof having a solid team around you.

The sky is the limit. I have a very open mind, if someone has an idea or concept, and they believe in it, and both they and Enjen will benefit, I am more than happy to run with it. I have a vision for Enjen going global, and I can’t do this on my own. The team at Enjen are great, with solid values and goals, we are building the business and having fun doing it.

I have a fantastic team of three, and we have a junior engineer who is about to join the team in November as a trainee consultant, taking us up to a team of five, including myself. Enjen Solutions has just been nominated for Fastest Growing Recruitment Agency in three years in the South East and London area, which is very exciting for us.

Enjen has a few international campaigns on the go. I recently flew up to the Netherlands to meet with a new client, who we are now helping source engineers from all over the world. Predominantly from South Africa, since South Africa is my home country.

We have been asked to assist a large engineering firm in sourcing international candidates for the construction industry, to come and work in the UK, which will be a new and exciting avenue for Enjen, our main focus up to this point has involved Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Recruitment. After much demand, Enjen is officially about to launch its services to the construction industry.

I have also just returned from South Africa, where we ran an advertising campaign, and I interviewed a number of engineers for our clients in the UK.

We are also looking at acquiring new premises in South West London. Actually things are really exciting; we are about to launch some new products to our clients as well, so I guess watch the space.

Reliability is key, and of course the right skills for the job, but more importantly the right personality to suit our client.

After various advertising methods (internet, Enjen’s website, newspapers, word of mouth, referrals, networking) the consultants will work very closely with the engineers they select, Enjen’s recruitment system operates both via a database for administrative purposes, but on a daily basis, Enjen’s consultants work from a hands-on system where there is weekly interaction with all the engineers the consultants are representing at the time, as apposed to just working on CV’s stored in a database system, and calling them up as and when a search is conducted, this encourages a more personal and accurate approach to our services.

If you have the skills which match any of our job profiles, regardless of which country you live in, and you are committed to the process; we can help you.

Working one on one with the consultant will stand you in good stead in finding the job you are looking for. Again, I always say what you put in is what you get out.

But to be honest if you are simply a nice person to Enjen’s consultants, they will always want to help you; they love what they do, so it is always a pleasure to help.

Candidates impress me when they are reliable, and friendly.

Yes, when the candidate goes “AWOL” after signing an employment contract with our client. This wastes one to two months of the consultants and the clients time, but more so it is a real disappointment since the consultants put their “all” into helping, and it feels like none of their efforts were appreciated.

It is an exciting time if you are thinking about getting into engineering, and there is a huge demand for loyal, focussed, and dedicated individuals, now and in the long term. If you feel engineering is your passion, I would advise you to research a little further into the various areas you can go into, and possible where you would like to end up. The demands are different according to the roles and you will find a lot of the roles involve quite a bit of local and international travel, but this can be a good stepping stone and a great way to gain international exposure. Find your direction now and you will get there.

Don’t be scared to go out there, ring up some engineering companies and ask if they wouldn’t mind you coming in for a couple of days to find out more about the industry, tell them you’ll be the tea boy if need be, who knows they may even offer you a part time trainee job! Companies like to see initiative and passion, rare qualities. When phoning around make sure to speak to both the Engineering Manager and Human Recourses department before you cross the company off your list.

Crazy! The engineering sector is booming. It’s great, salaries have increased dramatically; in some cases doubled. The world of engineering is becoming one big Smartie box, these days you can call up an engineer, and you never know what country is will be based in at that time! I have just been to an Expo where a whole hall was filled with International Engineering Firms trying to recruit engineers from the UK. There is a shortage of good engineers.

Yes definitely. In our sector; Industrial, Factory and Process Automation; there is a huge gap of well qualified, apprentice trained engineers, as well as good lead engineers.

The other gaps include permanent staff engineers as apposed to contractors.

In our industry, yes, I would say DCS and Instrumentation skills have been in great demand. This is because of the oil and gas industry boom. In the construction field, there is a huge demand for Quantity

Surveyors, and Forman, this demand is international.

I think the government and engineering firms should introduce some sort of engineering apprentice/trainee program or incentive scheme, to make up for the gap of hands on trained engineers. We have a lot of highly qualified degree engineers with no relevant hands on experience, and this is a problem, our clients need experience.

I believe a lot of doors are opening internationally, and this will encourage highly skilled engineers into the UK. With the visa schemes the government has introduced; Highly Skilled Migrants Visa and the Science and Engineering Graduate Scheme Visa, this has helped the UK engineering sector expand is skills pool. Likewise our international clients are using the same methods to bring in foreign skills. The international exchange of skills which seems to be growing everyday I think will create a lot more opportunities, and make it very easy to work in another country from month to month and year to year, thus opening up the market globally.

However a big hindrance, because of high security these days, and a nice challenge for the powers to be, globally, is allowing short term, last minute notice visas for field engineers, Project Houses, Systems Integrators, and OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) who have clients based all over the world and need to support their clients on short notice. This does restrict com- panies from employing good foreign engineers because they do not have an EU or British passport. This is a restriction when needing to travel internationally on last minute notice. What would be good is a system whereby engineers can obtain visas for short term assignments on short notice.