Although it’s a bit like the chicken and egg, my most important task is recruiting and retaining top talent. We have a machine in place to land top talent from college campuses. I’m quite convinced of that. But with the sort of growth we are undergoing, we also need to recruit staff, primarily engineers at this point, with substantial experience and expertise in energy-using systems. This would be easy if there were engineers in the market with 5-10 years experience like guys we have in that range. It isn’t the case.
I work extensively with a recruiter and I provide constant feedback on candidates she forwards to help her better understand what we are looking for. I’ve also written rambling explanations of what we are looking for. Sometimes I get concerned that she thinks we are impossible to satisfy. Well, we are almost impossible to satisfy.
First, a mini rant on recruiters. I’ve been told by probably three recruiters that they, unlike their competition, will thoroughly vet candidates, ensure they meet our every qualification and then after a few weeks they will present a miracle list of 4-5 candidates all of whom we would just love to have on staff. They would be so good, we might take two – even if we only need one and then we would be crying because we’d have to turn the other three down. Fuggedabahdit! The recruiter’s selling point is that they are supposed to save me time by not having to wade through a few dozen candidates. Bull. All this miracle recruiting service does is delay the process because the dream team they present to me has no more usable talent on average than 50 people a neophyte recruiter fresh out of college could find for us. Give me the 50.
Back to my recruiting exploits; last week I was writing up a two column table for our recruiter, with one column describing what we want and the other what we want to avoid. In the “don’t bother” column I essentially concluded we don’t want anyone from the competition, which generally speaking is where one should first look. I’m talking about competition in the energy efficiency program business.
Why is this? Quite frankly, because the engineering on average in this industry is poor, but it is also poor to a large extent in the systems design industry. On the other hand, at least in the design industry, things have to be made to somehow work. They may work like crap and waste energy up the wazoo but at least there is a required problem “solving” element. In the EE sector, engineers can operate in a parallel universe their entire career – which brings to mind the myth of experience, a topic of another rant.
How do I know the engineering in the EE industry is poor? Because we do a lot of program evaluation across the country, from east coast to great lakes to the west coast and beyond – close to 20 utilities in about a dozen states. Even stuff that a sociologist should be able to pull off is screwed up – like verifying a variable freq drive has auto controls installed, or knowing the difference between a heat recovery wheel for fresh air and a heat recovery wheel for dehumidification unit installed (unit is a god-awful pick for a northern climate anyway – design engineer should be fined, maybe spend a couple nights in jail too). The latter resulted in a massive incentive for gas savings in a new construction program. Uh, ouch!
So what sort of experienced people are we looking for? Smart engineers with high GPAs but not too much experience; generally engineers who understand how systems work, how they use energy, and how they should be controlled – really understand it. In general, best candidates come from smaller firms where they have interaction with the guy at the top and mentoring by people who know what they are doing. On the flip side, competition sets up offices in states where they start running programs and they hire “experienced” engineers to work in those branch offices. All I’ll say is it’s not worth looking at these candidates. It’s probably as hard as finding a porcupine in my woods – I did experience a real live (and real big!) porcupine in the wild here in cheesehead land so although not impossible I’m not sure whether I’ll see another one or see the ViQueenies win a super bowl in my lifetime.
Why not too experienced? Because engineers are either good or crappy and if they are good, they care about what their clients think and after being taken to the woodshed a few times for things the client doesn’t like they become calloused cynical curmudgeons unwilling to bend or change. They play it safe. This is typically not conducive to saving energy. Let me know if you need an explanation as to why experienced but crappy engineers are no good.
To be sure, there are definitely excellent engineers in the industry. We work for some of them as subs. Others have reviewed our work for program QC and they are very good. After throwing stones in my glass house I must break a few windows. Admittedly, we’ve gotten comments back from outside engineering firms that make me think the guy on the other end must think we’re idiots. However, rather than whining, crying, and denying, we get the things resolved and take long term corrective action.
