Electronics Weekly puts its questions to an industry figure: Dawn Ohlson is director of educational affairs at Thales in the UK

You appear to be recruiting an increasing number of graduates in the UK. What disciplines are you looking for?
We are looking for a large number of graduates with engineering degrees or cognate degrees in relevant subjects (maths, physics, etc) but of course our business would not function without exceptional people in programme management, finance, sales and marketing and other commercial areas.

Is there money to be made in engineering?
I guess that can be taken two ways: Can engineering companies survive in today's climate and can someone working as an engineer in such a company make a good living? Well the answer to both of those is yes. Thales is an extremely successful company with a very solid engineering foundation and we rely on having engineers in the company who want to stay with us. They would not stay if we were not paying competitive salaries.

There is currently an effort to promote literacy at schools and we obviously need to promote science because of the falling numbers of those taking A Level physics. Why aren't schools doing these things themselves?
From the contact I have had recently with teachers of these subjects at local schools they are all extremely dedicated. Schools have to promote all subjects and the students must ultimately make the decision as to what is best for them, but this is where I feel that we in industry can make a big difference. We can make it real for them. Show them what a great future they could have if they went down the route of a career in engineering.

Thales is working hard to get our young graduates out talking to students at local schools to act as role models. For example, with the Technology Specialist school closest to our HQ in Weybridge we have supported them in transforming a junk room into a technology lab, with donations for equipment and even included some of our Directors spending time painting it.

Is Thales happy with the skills of the UK graduates it recruits?
Yes we are. We search long and hard for the right people to fill the graduate vacancies and will see over 4,000 CVs each year. Once they join us they will then go through our four year graduate programme that will teach them all about Thales and give them the skills that they will need for their future career with us.

Are other European countries facing a skills shortage too?
I understand that other countries are starting to see the shift towards less technical subjects, but more of a problem is that those coming out of university with engineering degrees are not taking up engineering careers.

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.