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IT firms poach design engineers from OEMs
By siliconindia
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Monday, 25 August 2008, 23:25 IST
New Delhi: To focus on automotive design business, small and medium sized IT firms are now tracking down employees from the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as they are facing shortage of manpower in that sector.
There is a shortage of mechanical engineers who are doing most of the design jobs. Nasscom points out that out of 200,000 mechanical engineers who are passing out every year only less than 25 percent are employable in which about 20-25 percent remains in this field and the rest which is about 80 percent move to Software and IT services.
Aiming at poaching employees from OEMs and automobile manufactures, IT firms offer them attractive compensation, overseas travel, multiple customer engagement, diversified engineering activities and creative and open work culture.
"Design engineering does not only relate to drawing a product using the latest software packages. Behind the product development lie key challenges that use experience. These challenges are benchmarking, value analysis/value engineering, productionisation, environment impact. A significant amount of training, organizing and mentoring is required to harness this existing talent," Harish Sheth, CMD, Setco Automotive told Business Standard.
Simultaneously, losing a design engineer costs OEMs at least two years of training and about 
200,000. The attrition rate among OEMs is 15-25 percent.
Suman Bose, Country Director, Dassault Systems, India, says "The auto sector is growing in all possible sub-segments and therefore the shortage gap of mechanical engineers is going to widen more. Unless fresh engineers with specialized skills enter the industry, there would always be exchange of employees."
"Engineering services being a reasonably new service arena, Indian IT firms face acute shortage of professionals. The industry currently requires at least 15,000 design engineers in the automotive domain and the demand is expected to grow at least 40-50 percent year-on-year," says Satish, Head of operations, Axcend.
200,000. The attrition rate among OEMs is 15-25 percent.
Suman Bose, Country Director, Dassault Systems, India, says "The auto sector is growing in all possible sub-segments and therefore the shortage gap of mechanical engineers is going to widen more. Unless fresh engineers with specialized skills enter the industry, there would always be exchange of employees."
"Engineering services being a reasonably new service arena, Indian IT firms face acute shortage of professionals. The industry currently requires at least 15,000 design engineers in the automotive domain and the demand is expected to grow at least 40-50 percent year-on-year," says Satish, Head of operations, Axcend.