"Second Life for jobs? Get yersel' a first one, hen," would be the pragmatic comment of Glaswegians. Just so did an Edinburgh paper advise 'tone it down' to a recruiting story a decade ago where a print job ad, carried only the company's web address.
But savvy job-hunters know Facebook and MySpace have job hire employer pages, and that Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft recently joined TMP ad-recruitment in a Second Life (SL) virtual job fair. It changes some interview rules. SLifers are to take care choosing and dressing their avatars, that offer social clues and signals, they need manipulation skills to sit, rather than float, and should not 'shout' by typing capitals.' Final caveat, many job hunters missed interviews by mixing up time zones.
Second Life advantages
For employers, SL advantages are cheaper (no travel costs, thus greener) and even with buying SL "land" HP claims cost less than paying an external recruiter to hire one experienced candidate. Company kingpins sit in unnoticed 'en-avatar,' and candidates are at ease with on-line converse.
Since the UK academic system begins in the autumn, many find a 'migratory' urge for new jobs striking as geese wing south. In Scotland, large corporations and SMEs are on the skill hunt for northern migrators, though the criteria 'experienced' is in short supply.
National Semiconductor, Greenock, is on the search for experienced engineers. These are becoming a rare breed. One engineering vacancy has been posted on the IIE job board by Anne Docherty, who is responsible for recruitment at the site, as she is hopeful of reaching overseas applicants too.
Freescale, despite East Kilbride and Dunfermline fab sale plans, is also on the look out for development engineering skills in particular for the qualification of upgraded microcontroller devices.
The Redline Group Hamilton office is handling this search through Martin Crapper, who says the hybrid nature of the role between R&D, production and manufacturing makes it hard to come by the right level of experience, or even find someone willing to move into development out of R&D. But there has been over a dozen responses from overseas. RF design skills are hardest to find from Wick to Kelso, he says, due to an 'insufficient pool' of Scottish companies working in RF. But he notes that semiconductor skills are wanted, with plenty of smaller start-ups relying on word-of-mouth alerts.
XanIC
One such is Glasgow University spin-off, XanIC, looking for "MMIC chip design skills to work converting customers' needs," says XanIC CEO, Nick Wood. Avatar-style, donning a different company hat, he also notes a requirement for bio-sensor and electronics design skills in medical devices and life sciences.
A more unusual electronics location is Oban. Here the Scottish Association for Maritime Sciences seeks engineers for work on a variety of instruments and platforms for marine/polar research.
Talent Scotland wants a battery system engineer, a process engineer, analog/mixed signal design, electronics design, adaptive optics system specialists, an audio development expert and digital design engineer for a new audio development team.
On the Universities front, Dundee needs a thin-film Si-based photoelectronics system development, Edinburgh offers Neumorphic VLSI work, while Glasgow hunts for Lab-on-a-Pill (microfluidics and biosensing) skills.
Semefab, Wolfson Microelectronics, plexus
Semefab Scotland, with two operational wafer fabs supporting MEMS, CMOS, Asic and discrete processes and new MEMS kit, and a fab 3 in the planning stage, is on the lookout for a handful of people, with skills in power design, process development and sales.
In Edinburgh, Wolfson Microelectronics is on the lookout for analogue design skills. Even Plexus, grown to 21 people at its Livingston design centre is "actively seeking to fill further soft and hardware engineer positions," says Plexus v-p Europe, Andy Allen.
Lots of pickings for those who fancy Scotland's east-west high-tech corridor, fast superseding the Glencoe-style 'silicon glen.'
Contacts
mcrapper@redlineplc.com
www.xanic.co.uk
www.talentscotland.com
www.semefab.co.uk
www.wolfsonmicro.com
www.plexus.com
See also: the Electronics Weekly focus on jobs in electronics, presenting a roundup of career-related content and a full list of agencies recruiting for the electronics industry.