How to Win the War for Talent among Professional Engineers : An Employer Branding Perspective

Sammanfattning: Organisations strive to gain competitive advantages and there is an increasing demand for more advanced technology in today's dynamic and complex environment. The importance of engineering is increasing in the global world, which leads to a higher demand of professional engineers. They represent among the hardest roles to fill. The short supply of engineers, the high employment rate and low unemployment rate among engineers in Sweden makes it difficult for companies to attract them. This issue is often described as ‘The War for Talent’. The War for Talent is a greater issue for organisations within the public sector because of negative prejudices, reputations and stereotypes. This and the fact that there are limited resources for marketing within the public sector when they are funded by the government, make it difficult to compete with organisations within the private sector. The public sector in Sweden is relatively large, and The Swedish Transport Administration is a large company within the public sector that need to prepare for the war for talents among companies within the private sector. The purpose of this research is to investigate work value preferences of professional engineers and important recruitment aspects to consider, when choosing an employer. To deal with the war of talents effectively, the concept of employer branding has been developed as an effective organisational strategy for employment. In the report, we will study the concept of employer branding and the employer branding process, work value preferences and important recruitment aspects to enhance understanding of how companies can attract professional engineers in Sweden, to initiate a career within the public sector. Our data collection was through qualitative interviews with eight professional engineers, both from the private and the public sector. Our study developed an adapted framework with work values preferred by Swedish professional engineers that can be used as a guide to help and enable to attract and recruit engineers towards the public sector. We found differences between the public sector and the private, and six core values preferred by Swedish professional engineers, where organisations in the public sector should put a certain emphasis on two of them. There were some certain preferences among recruitment channels, and we found that recruitment strategies could enhance, improve or damage the brand and that the corporate reputation affects the opinion of the company. We also have some specific recommendations towards the case company.