It’s the hottest career going, forcing employers to widen the net they cast for candidates

Looking for a "hot" career field? Probably none suits that bill quite as well as telecommunications engineer. The 1997 Occupational Outlook Summary for San Diego County, published by the San Diego Consortium and the Private Industry Council, analyzes more than 30 occupations and rates telecommunications engineer as the job with the most promising status and prospects. The field is considered an "emerging occupation" and due to its relative infancy, the report does not include projected new job growth for it. But it does make one point clear: It is definitely projected to grow.

    The demand for telecommunications engineers, especially those with experience, is so strong that it is the only occupation among those surveyed considered "very difficult" for employers. Even when seeking inexperienced telecommunications engineers, the employers are thought to face a situation that is "somewhat difficult."

    Karen Donnely, human resource manager for Commquest Technologies, says local competition has become so intense that "the market is pretty much saturated." Comstream Corp.'s Janet French agrees: "The local candidate pool has pretty much dried up. Companies are recruiting their neighbors. Our engineers get calls daily from headhunters."

    The problem has become so severe that most of the local telecommunications firms are casting their recruiting nets farther and wider. Donnely reports that her firm "used to just recruit locally, but now we go all over the country." That's apparently become the norm. "We’re all doing a lot of relocations and our costs are going up significantly," says French.

    Recruiting from other regions, however, has proven to be tough. Engineers from other parts of the country are hesitant to relocate to San Diego. Donnely finds this particularly so in the eastern states, although her company has fared better in the midwest and Texas. To improve relocation prospects, a group of 30 or so local high-tech companies are considering a cooperative effort to conduct an educational campaign aimed at engineers from other high-tech areas. According to French, the main message of the campaign will be to sell San Diego as a flourishing high-tech community, a fact that is little known outside the area. Among the companies involved in this joint venture are Brooktree, Qualcomm, Hewlett-Packard, Com-stream, Hughes Network Systems and Nokia.

    The recruiting difficulties also extend to entry-level telecommunications engineers. The strongest candidates receive multiple offers. Comstream, for example, aimed to hire 10 new graduates in the past recruiting season, but was only able to hire two. French sums it up: "They get offers from everyone."

    All this demand, of course, is pushing salaries higher and higher. The Occupational Outlook Summary lists the typical salary for a telecommunications engineer with three to six years of experience as $34,840 to $54,600. That is likely to be a fairly substantial underestimate. "We have to constantly review our salary and wage bases to stay competitive," says French.

    No one expects the situation to change very quickly. Telecommunications engineers are neck-deep in opportunities and their salaries are climbing steadily. And for the foreseeable future, there will be more of the same. That's a fair enough definition of a "hot" field.

    Neil Murray is director of career services at UCSD.