OEE, KnowRES report on ocean energy recruitment trends

KnowRES project, supported by Ocean Energy Europe, has published a report on recruitment trends, forecasts, and most wanted profiles in the European ocean energy sector.

KnowRES project aims to create an online platform to provide job intelligence to industry, candidates and academic and training institutions, while performing an analysis of the skills needed by the industry to ensure that the provided education and training courses are tailor-made to the sectors’ needs.

The project is led by the Association of European Renewable Energy Research Centers (EUREC) and 8 partners, including Ocean Energy Europe.

When it comes to ocean energy, the companies that replied to the survey got involved in the ocean energy sectors in three different waves: in the late 1990s (42%), in the years 2005-2010 (42%), and more recently (16%).

The size of companies active in the sector remains small with a majority of them having a 10-25 people-strong staff, report states.

The three most wanted profiles, according to the report, the companies and organisations are looking for are:

• Project Manager
• Structural Engineer
• R&D Engineer

The report states that ocean energy sector’s job market is currently fairly unorganized given it is a new sector, and therefore, there is a need to provide more job intelligence to various stakeholders such as job candidates, and academic/training institutions.

Due to data limitation and fragmented information, it is difficult to provide a clear overview of the whole sector, the report states, and recommends that a systematic research framework should be put in place.

Also, the commitment and input of the industry are essential to the successful development of a reliable job barometer, as well as public interventions to foster skill development and confidence in the sector.