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If you want to recruit electronics attorneys…

If you want to recruit electronics/physics/electrical engineering patent attorneys you have to learn to compromise, argues Pete Fellows.

I have, in previous articles, discussed the serious demographic issues that exist in the profession currently.  In particular in relation to attorneys with a broadly ‘electronics’ background who are between part qualified and perhaps a couple of years post qualified.  Over the last year or so the issues have become even more pronounced.  It is almost impossible to recruit attorneys in this technical area in the UK right now.  Simply looking through the CIPA Supplement over the last few months is an indicator – most of the advertised positions by both recruiters and firms themselves are in electronics and many of them are repetitions of jobs that have been active for months.

So if you’re a firm of patent attorneys or a corporate trying to recruit at this level what do you do?  Well in many cases the preferred option appears to be waiting for circumstances to change and hoping a candidate comes along.  The problem with this is that they simply aren’t materialising and if they do, competition for them is prolific.  Some firms are prepared to break the pay structure to recruit and that can be extremely tough to compete against.  So if you’ve tried waiting and hoping what other options are open to you? Here’s a handy list:

1) Get people with more experience

Given budgetary constraints or the ease of incorporating people into the practice, most of the recruitment in electronics is up to two/three years’ post qualified.  It can be quite difficult to move jobs if you have more experience than this and even worse if you are at salaried Partner level.  This is due to many firms not being prepared to risk having to pay much more for the work to be done and concerns about the career progression they can offer.  I appreciate these concerns of course but would argue that given the significant shortages of potential recruits and the seemingly unending abundance of work perhaps the risk seems worth taking?  And if you hired someone experienced then it may allow greater freedom for recruiting more graduate trainees (as you will have another pair of hands to train them) consequently bringing down the net cost.  There are still firms, post-recession, where achieving promotion to Partner and equity Partner remains very difficult so there is possibly more chance of attracting a Partner with the right incentives than someone at Associate level.

2) Get people with less experience

Graduate recruitment appears to be increasing across the profession which is very good news but there are still firms that are holding out.  In some cases I feel that if they had recruited more graduates a couple of years ago and taken the burden of training back then they would be in a much stronger position today.  I can’t see any reason why that would not remain the case recruiting now for a stronger position come 2016.  As a recruiter we do not get a great deal of graduate level instructions although this appears to be increasing to.  It is not easy to recruit graduates with an electronics, computer science or engineering background given the competition for them from a variety of sectors.  The profession still does not do enough, in my opinion, to attract candidates from universities beyond a few southern universities and there is undoubtedly untapped potential for recruitment from universities in the north of England, Wales and Scotland.

3) Get people from somewhere else

If you want someone with experience who can get the work done then why not recruit from overseas?  Whilst not necessarily straightforward, the process of applying for an employment visa for candidates is not as complicated or as expensive as many might believe.  I do appreciate that there can be concerns over longevity of employment but I feel that at times these concerns are exaggerated in comparison to home grown attorneys.  There is always a risk that someone will leave and at least if you are sponsoring someone to stay here they have more indebtedness to you than the average new hire might.  For non-EU attorneys moving to the UK qualifying as both a UK and EP patent attorney is possible.  There is some diplomacy required but we at Fellows know of attorneys who have achieved European qualification without being, at the time, European citizens.  Of course, if you are hiring from Europe many of these issues fall away but depending on the jurisdiction remuneration levels may be difficult to accommodate (German patent attorneys, for example, tend to earn a great deal more than their UK counterparts at a similar point in their careers).  We have had some success hiring attorneys from the US, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa into UK or European positions and in all recent cases these candidates have performed better than the hiring firm anticipated.  I really feel that this is the best route to solving demographic gaps and the more firms that openly consider it, the easier it will become to attract high quality candidates to the UK profession.

Finally on another note, yes if you are currently working as a patent attorney in electronics, physics or electrical engineering and particularly if you have recently qualified then there are a myriad of options open to you.  It may be easy to be tempted by a good offer that comes along but we would recommend speaking to a recruiter to get a feel for the whole market somewhat objectively (and I appreciate I have a vested interest in saying that).  When we have worked with attorneys moving positions in this technical area recently, controlling the negotiation has been key – you will not be short of offers but you may need an advocate to help you obtain the best offer for you (and that doesn’t necessarily mean the most amount of money), as well as having someone asking uncomfortable questions of potential employers to aid clarity in your decision making.

Pete Fellows is the Managing Director of Fellows and Associates and he is undecided who is the best Catwoman actress.  It is one of life’s big debates which he doesn’t have a definitive answer for.  He will offer his opinion though. He. Is. Always. Offering. Opinions.

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