FMC Meditech, the specialist medical technology team at FMC Global Talent, has seen unprecedented demand this summer for field service engineers. With service revenues now accounting for a larger proportion of our clients’ revenues than ever before, the demand for skilled service engineers has significantly increased to ensure SLAs are met and big contracts upheld.

During the second quarter of 2015 FMC Global Talent’s Meditech team has seen demand for service engineers quadruple, with no sign of this letting up as we head into the third quarter. It appears that protecting and growing revenues by delivering engineering and customer excellence is at the forefront of the industry’s agenda, and FMC find themselves expertly positioned to service this spike in demand.

So what’s causing this? FMC Global Talent’s Meditech team have taken a closer look into the service engineering labour market, and this is what they’ve discovered:

The changing face of the service engineer

The role of the service engineer has shifted significantly, and with it the requirement for a new level of interpersonal and customer service skills. Interestingly service engineers have some of the most frequent and important customer contact, which for some companies has been overlooked as an opportunity to enhance brand reputation and customer experience. No longer is it acceptable for an engineer to simply fix a machine, they are now tasked with fixing customers too! With service contracts now worth millions to our clients, the battle for ‘hybrid’ customer service engineer talent is certainly contributing to the demand spike.

The increased demand for IT and software skills

Scientific and medical capital equipment is evolving and is now more ‘connected’ than ever before. Machines now talk to each other via sophisticated networks and house new challenges for service engineers in the form of complex CPUs and disk drives. Therefore service engineers need to evolve also, but it appears this just isn’t happening quickly enough. Advanced IT networking and software skills are now a pre-requisite for a lot of FMC’s clients which has significantly reduced the talent pool.

The ageing workforce

It appears 2015 is the retirement year, with nearly a dozen senior engineers within our client base putting down their tool box for the final time. However, it appears that this is set to continue as a large proportion of FMC’s clients have expressed concerns about the number of employees in their service engineering team close to retirement age. Significant investments have been made to attract apprentice and graduate engineers to help with the talent pipeline, however there is still a significant lack of bench strength to back fill the more senior engineers. The war for engineering talent is fierce and attracting young talent to service engineering roles is made even tougher when competing with the seemingly more glamourous aerospace, motorsport and energy markets.

FMC Global Talent’s Meditech team are market experts in both fixed location and field base service engineers and we have access to some of the very best. Having specialised in this field for a number of years we have been able to monitor the skills trends and adapt accordingly. We now have an enviable network of electrical, mechanical and IT engineers across the UK who have all been interviewed and vetted.

We are supporting some of the world’s largest and most complex scientific and medical technology businesses to ensure their equipment is available when you need it.

If you are a service engineer seeking your next move and would like one of FMC Global Talent’s experienced Meditech team members to discuss your CV or career options, then please get in touch. Alternatively, if you are looking for service engineering talent, from trainee to management level, we would be very happy to discuss how we can support you in getting the right candidate into your business.