Auto Engineers Are in Demand, Jobs Experts Say

Automotive engineers remain in demand, despite this week's announced layoffs at General Motors Corp. Just this week, Hella, a German manufacturer with a facility in Plymouth, MI, announced plans to hire 50 new lighting and electronics engineers before the end of the year. Ironically, Hella needs the new talent because it's picking up more business from General Motors, and Ford Motor Co. chose it as a strategic supplier for exterior lighting.

From Detroit Free Press

DETROIT — Automotive engineers remain in demand, despite this week’s announced layoffs at General Motors Corp.

Just this week, Hella, a German manufacturer with a facility in Plymouth, MI, announced plans to hire 50 new lighting and electronics engineers before the end of the year.

Ironically, Hella needs the new talent because it’s picking up more business from General Motors, and Ford Motor Co. chose it as a strategic supplier for exterior lighting.

“Despite intense competition, layoffs and downsizing at some domestic auto manufacturers and suppliers, Hella is growing and we are hiring,” Steve Williams, the company’s human resources manager, said in a statement. “We will be hiring both experienced engineers and graduate students to join the current staff of 120 engineers at our North American headquarters in Plymouth.”

Hella’s plans demonstrated that automotive engineers still can find opportunities, says David Amati, the director of global automotive business for the Society of Automotive Engineers.

Lots of automotive suppliers in key fields are hiring, he said. Toyota , Hyundai and Nissan have been enlarging their technical centers in southeastern Michigan. This week Behr America , automotive arm of a German manufacturer that’s operating in the Detroit area, said that at next week’s Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Cobo Center, it plans to announce it’s expanding its North American operations.

“The automotive engineers don’t have to look outside their field,” Amati said Tuesday. “Now, they may have to move, but there are opportunities. And I think there are opportunities in southeast Michigan as well as around North America, particularly in the South.”

Three fields are particularly hot just now, Amati said. They are alternative power systems, including hybrid vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells; electronics, and advanced materials.

Steve Howell, chairman of the mechanical engineering department at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, MI, said automotive engineers are well suited to transfer their skills to other technical fields.

“Engineers are trained to use math and science to address a human need,” Howell said. “That may be designing an engine for a GM car, but you could apply those just as easily to designing a new aircraft or designing a power plant for electricity.”

Meanwhile, Calvin Haddad, director of Detroit-area operations for Spherion, a Fort Lauderdale, FL-based staffing firm, said his company is hoping to place some of the laid-off GM engineers.

“We just have a lot of engineering openings,” he said, adding that there has been “a constant demand” in this market, and others nationwide, for manufacturing, materials, logistics, quality and design engineers.

Nationwide, his company has 885 engineering openings now. About 225 of those, he said, are in Michigan and Ohio in a variety of specialties, some in the auto industry.

“We’ve had one of our strongest years,” Haddad said of the local staffing business. “There is a real positive story to paint here, despite the current situation.”

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