Despite recent economic challenges, the various nuclear and defence industry sectors are able to sustain momentum and continue to hire for many exciting projects across the UK.
Here, we spoke to Shereese Wood, Scantec’s Divisional Director for Engineering, Project Services and Skilled Trades, about how her teams find the top quality candidates for their nuclear and defence roles.
Thanks for chatting with us, Shereese. Please can you tell us a little bit about Scantec’s history in the nuclear and defence industry?
Scantec has been working in the nuclear and defence sectors for 30 years, and I personally have worked at Scantec for around 11 years now. The specialist nuclear and defence recruitment team is well-established and long-serving. A lot of the consultants - particularly within the engineering team - have been at Scantec for anywhere between five years and twenty years, so their knowledge and experience of these sectors is exceptional.
Building on that knowledge, our newer members of the team, with tenures of between one and five years, are all very skilled and knowledgeable about the sectors they work in and can harness the support from our longer serving consultants. The team is driven, dynamic and customer focused, picking up the industry knowledge, trends, expectations and terminology very quickly. They know what their clients want and how to deliver for them.
In regards to the history of our team, we have a key account with a large MoD client which is where the majority of our experience in the sector has stemmed from. Over the past two decades, we’ve gone on to work on scores of nuclear and defence projects across the UK encompassing many different projects at all stages of the project life cycle.
For example, we work with clients across nuclear power stations, with manufacturers of reactors, plant and equipment that you would find at nuclear power plants, organisations that handle nuclear waste and across various highly sensitive projects across the Defence sector.
The roles we recruit for are varied - from engineer level right through to director level on both a contract and a permanent basis. Our white collar Engineering division specialises in disciplines including mechanical, electrical, QHSE and project management, and our blue collar division focus on ground level roles on the sites such as mechanical fitters and electricians. In addition to this, we have a fantastic Project Services team which supports commercial roles including project planning, costing, and estimating.
The industries are highly regulated - so the majority of candidates will require some type of security clearance. The professionals we work with often have to go through quite a lengthy process for their security clearance and will need a British passport, and to have lived and worked in the UK for the last five years. It’s our clients’ responsibility to put their chosen candidates through clearance, but a step in the process that we support.
How do you ensure you have the best quality candidates in the nuclear sector?
Our database is comprised of professionals that we have developed relationships with over the last 30 years. Some of our candidates will have long standing relationships with Scantec that span our lifetime and others will be newer introductions that are just beginning their career journeys with us.
All of our candidates are coded on our database according to their attributes, so it makes it really easy for our recruiters to search effectively and contact the relevant candidates about any suitable roles that we have available.
We are proud of our database as it has been built through strong networking and relationship building. This means that a lot of the candidates we work with won’t be readily available on job boards or LinkedIn, for example. That’s one thing we often hear from our clients - they prefer outsourcing their recruitment to Scantec because we have access to so many people they wouldn’t necessarily be able to find.
We all do a lot of networking with our clients, and we’ve built many long-standing relationships with people in some of the UK’s biggest organisations. A lot of the candidates and clients we work with aren’t necessarily always actively recruiting or looking for new roles, but we maintain those relationships through informing them of changes in legislation or market news, for example. By doing so, they know we are a trusted partner and will work with us again when the time comes.
What does the market look like at the moment?
Despite all the recent economic uncertainty, we are fortunate to work in sectors that continue to receive funding and push forward with project delivery.
Even if recruitment slows down in certain areas, the sector as a whole is keeping pace and able to remain active and thriving. It’s a great industry to work in during hard times - it’s not going anywhere!
One thing we are always looking for and that our clients are increasingly interested in is developing relationships with graduates who are early on in their careers. We have plenty of opportunities available for those who would like to work with some really high profile clients on projects that they’ll be proud to put on their CVs. Giving newly qualified graduates the exposure to the nuclear and defence industry is always a great way to kick-start their career development.
Get in touch
If you are looking for a new role in one of the many nuclear and defence industry sectors, whether you are a recent graduate, an experienced professional, or your organisation is hiring, get in touch with Shereese Wood on [email address] or fill out our contact form.
