Recruitment firm goes straight to universities

NES International held a strategy update meeting at the start of April to discuss the growing shortages of engineers, a situation that is of growing concern to consultants at NES

NES International held a strategy update meeting at the start of April to discuss the growing shortages of engineers.

With over 500 engineering vacancies live on the NES web site - it is a situation that is of growing concern to consultants at NES.

These concerns are being echoed throughout the industry, and it is being further compounded by the reduced number of engineering students at universities - as reported by The Engineer on 8th March 2001, "Student apathy could threaten engineering's graduate base".

The national trend of decline in the numbers of engineers is being reflected in real terms in the number of applications per vacancy.

Mike Brown (Manager of the Building Services Recruitment Division, at the NES Head Office) said, "It is a worrying prospect that we are now facing.

The market is becoming tighter and the competition fiercer.

The NES web site is one of the tools we are using to combat this.

Engineers are able to register their details on-line and receive automatic email notifications of suitable vacancies, or, browse all of our vacancies on-line.

We are now having to look further afield for suitable candidates - and the web site is helping us to reach this extended audience".

The NES plans for the future, include a drive to target graduates and undergraduates, by going direct to the source - with universities being the first ports of call, along with recruitment shows around the country.

The Internet is providing the most significant means for communicating to this new target group, through direct e-mail campaigns, search engine promotion, hyper-links from other web sites and an overall integrated marketing communications approach.

Initial results are promising - the NES CV collection facility has reported a 54% rise in CVs coming into the company since the introduction of the redesigned web site at the start of February.

The continued campaign is expected to grow the NES market share and further establish their industry specific dominance.

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