UK FE Analyst salary? 1

[SarahL]

I might be looking to recruit a full time FE engineer, possible looking at a graduate mech eng, with a couple of years experience.

Has anyone got advice about the pay we would need to offer to attract high calibre candidates?

Also any advice about where to advertise to reach the right audience would be useful.

Thanks!

Sarah

 

[Drej]

As with everything, it depends, and in this case on a whole host of things I guess. It depends on the:

- location of the company
* country
* part of the country
* general accessibility/local area costs/facilities/etc.
- qualitites of the individual
* direct skills/experience/uni. studied at/etc.
- work to be carried out (nature of work the company involved in)
* is it specialist work?
* how specialist?
- level of supply and demand at the time of the advertisement
- etc.

Be prepared to pay if it is specialist work, as your candidate will be hard to find with the right skills. Either that or trade off for someone who is willing to be trained up and bring in at respectve lower cost. Reaching the right audience shouldn't be a problem, as long as you're willing to foot the cost. You have:

- Professional Engineering magazine (IMechE)
- The Engineer magazine
- Engineering magazine
- Lots of websites, but

http://www.jobsite.co.uk/

is probably one of the best for our industry that I have found.

You can use the sources above to gauge the salary for the right candidate.



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[corus]

Forget what they offer in the magazines, they don't pay enough. You should pay about 50,000 GBP pa.

corus

 

[gwolf]

SarahL,

If you need to get up and running quickly you need to pay a lot of money - corus is not far off the mark if you want quick good results.

The market for stress engineers with FEA and experience is red-hot at the moment. The good, experienced people won't get out of bed for under £50K.

You can probably attract the person who you describe for about 30K + pension but no matter how good they are personally - question is, can they do the job? Will they be familiar with the FE package that you have, did you buy a good FE package. Are they just an FE jockey or do they really understand what they are doing.

GIGO, you get what you pay for.

 

[johnhors]

Corus, Gwolf

Spot on, couldn't agree more.

There's lots of "analysts" out there that are no more than FE jockeys, they know which buttons to press to get a pretty picture for the management. Ask them to run an analysis with balanced loading and minimal restraints (i.e. the 3-2-1 method) and you get a blank stare back.

 

[Drej]

I take your point - and wholeheartedly agree - about the pay not being high enough, but 50k for a graduate analyst with 2 years industrial experience? In the UK? Dream on. Not on a permanent basis. Unless you employ them in the City that's a footballer's wage. I've been in FE for nearly 10 years and I've never come across anything like that (not on a permanent basis), certainly not for the spec given above. If you're in the "specialist" category of analysts (CFD, Formula 1, bespoke structures, etc.), then that's a different story and it's a possibility. If you're talking a contract basis (hourly rate) then again, this is a feasible wage, but again how many companies would employ a contractor at that rate with only that amount of experience? Not many. I doubt very much whether any company with their wits about them would take on a candidate with only 2yrs industrial experience for anything more than 30k, mainly because it would de-harmonise the wage structure and alienate the "locals" so to speak.

Cheers.


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[corus]

Drej, Perhaps the figure quoted is comparable to a salary of a footballer from Accrington Stanley, however this is specialised work and should attract a high salary unless you just want someone to churn out pretty pictures as johnhors says. For 2 years experience though I'd consider someone as just coming out of their apprenticeship and not really of much use. On reflection, and with an eye on promoting higher salaries for FE work, I'll revise my figure down to 49995 GBP pa.

corus

 

[Drej]

> Drej, Perhaps the figure quoted is comparable to a salary of a footballer from Accrington Stanley, however this is specialised work and should attract a high salary unless you just want someone to churn out pretty pictures as johnhors says

I can't agree more on the wage issue, and I've never said anything to the contrary. However, saying "this is specialised work" is a gross generalisation and the reality of the market is that companies employ people who create pretty pictures entirely because they don't cost 50k - and why should they employ a 50k specialist when a 30k picture-creator looks much better on the books. I'm not defending it, I'm just telling you how it is. Huffing and puffing and saying they should attract a high salary I totally agree with you, and I huff and puff about this all the time myself, even more so now when I am in the process of our company closing and am currently in the market for another job.

> For 2 years experience though I'd consider someone as just coming out of their apprenticeship and not really of much use.

Precisely. This is my point. Which is why generally the figure should be closer to 30k than 50k.


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