Just over a year ago the electronics industry moved to tackle the threat of falling skills standards in the UK by forming the cross-industry and government-backed UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF).
With the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and SEMTA (The Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies), UKESF is supported by employers such as ARM, CSR, Dialog Semiconductor and Imagination Technologies.
To find out how the UKESF initiative is working in practice, Electronics Weekly interviewed Andy Repton, senior engineering director for advanced technologies at Dialog Semiconductor, and Rebecca Fradley, its head of learning and development.
Dialog was one of the founding industry members of the UKESF. Why did you get involved?
Andy Repton: The NMI originally presented the idea of the UKESF to us back in 2009. They talked to us about the decline in the number of students entering electronics in the UK and we recognised the need to be part of re-engaging with young people and promoting the electronics industry to them.
The statistics NMI presented mirrored our experience of trying to recruit at the graduate level, so we were immediately interested in being part of a scheme aimed at reversing this trend.
As a company, it’s in our best interests to ensure a future supply of people, and this opportunity offered us access to a wealth of talented electronics graduates.
Rebecca Fradley: The project was one that was whole-heartedly supported by the executive team. The company has, for a long time, been supporting young talent through a number of methods, and in particular Manoj Thanigasalam, the general manager of our display business unit was a very passionate advocate.
Sadly Manoj died shortly after the launch of the UKESF, so because of his enthusiasm for development we named one of the UKESF scholarships after him.
What challenges have you encountered in recruiting at a graduate level?
Fradley: I came into the industry recently, from working in professional services in the City. Here I was used to receiving 600-700 applications for 10-15 places on law or property graduate programmes. So I was astounded to come into an industry where the numbers of students on electronics engineering degrees had declined by 50% in the past five years.
We have a centrally organised graduate recruitment programme, but the decline in electronics students has meant we have to work harder to get the best young talent.
The UKESF provides a chance to meet stars earlier in the process and start working towards employing them in the future.
We actually are proactive in a number of areas with universities – attending careers fairs across the UK and Europe; sponsoring a number of students outside of the UKESF projects; creating access grants for talented students from poorer backgrounds; sponsoring prizes on various courses; offering structured work experience and industrial placements; lecturing on university courses; and running “get to know us” beer and pizza evenings at universities.
What is it about the scheme that matches the needs of the industry?
Fradley: It’s not just about targeting university students; if the stream of talent is to continue we need to raise awareness of the industry at an earlier level.
For me, one of the key components of the UKESF programme is the school liaison. To start to turn the decline around you have to develop the excitement about the electronics industry early on.
When you talk to school students, they don’t see engineering as a particularly glamorous industry to work in. Their perception is that professions such as law and property are far more exciting. As someone who’s worked in all of these, the reality is different.
Repton: One of the things we do is go into schools with the consumer devices that the young people love such as games consoles, MP3 players and smartphones and explain how what we as a semiconductor company do links to the products and we talk about how exciting it is to be part of developing them.
We hope that as we do more of this engineering will be recognised as relevant and interesting; and the decline in the number of electronics students will reverse.
How else does contribution to the scheme help the company?
Fradley: The UKESF programme gives us a very effective way to identify the most talented students. A high proportion of the applications this year were excellent and we were particularly impressed by those we interviewed. We actually had many more who met our criteria than we were able to sponsor.
Repton: A further benefit is the links that we’re forming with the key universities. The programme helps ensure that their courses are linked to industry needs and their curriculum content gives graduates the necessary skills to enter the workplace. This will help the UK market grow.
With the proposed changes to university tuition fees, do you think the amount of industry sponsorship is set to increase?
Repton: I think it will need to if we’re to avoid a drop in talent. The recent fees increase could be seen to dissuade talented engineers from going to university, but it can also be turned into an opportunity. By offering scholarships and bursaries we not only help the students financially, we also have a much longer period to work with them and assess them.
A recent EU report said microelectronics was essential for the EU’s economic growth, so any scheme that has an element of sponsorship in it has to be good for the industry. We can help those excellent candidates we decide to sponsor come out of university without an enormous debt.
Fradley: We’ve had some outstanding graduates come to us in the past; for example Mairead Kelly, who was recently named Young Design Engineer of the Year. The changes to university tuition fees could certainly mean that the talent pool shrinks.
For this reason we’ve also got involved in an access bursaries programme outside of UKESF, making it feasible for someone who couldn’t previously afford to go to university.
How many undergraduate students have you taken on this year through the UKESF? What opportunities will they be given?
Repton: We’ve taken on three students from Surrey, Bristol and Southampton, the latter of these receiving the UKESF Manoj Thanigasalam Scholarship.
We’ll be giving all the students responsibility from the first day, joining our engineering teams to design chips. Initially they will be shadowing junior engineers, but they’re all very bright people and will be given real simulation and synthesis work.
They’ll probably mirror much of the work we’ve developed for our graduate development programme. Being very talented, they’ll play a vital part in the organisation and could continue to do so for a long time.
What are the prospects for UK industry?
Repton: There’s an exciting future for electronics here in the UK. You only have to look at the number of new gadgets and the next generation of phones to see how important the UK electronics sector is.
But we must address the talent issue and it is a real challenge to reverse the decline. I believe the UKESF’s work will help, particularly if its efforts become more widely supported by industry and government.