Capital Green Talent is launching a quarterly UK solar Job Index with a view of creating a de facto barometer of the solar job market in the UK.  The index will track the fluctuating demand for certain positions, regional variations and offer some analysis.

The data reported has been gathered by tracking position demand and regional information across online job boards, career portals and in a selection of newspapers.

This month we are establishing statistical benchmarks so will not be presenting a full index but have some interesting “information” to report, none the less.

Position analysis across the UK Solar Job Market

Spread of Solar positions across the UK

Regional Spread of Solar positions across England

The fact that we see an even split between commercial and technical positions strongly indicate that the UK is in a period of rapid growth, being driven by a large influx of sales and business development staff. One would suspect that as the UK solar sector matures we will see the balance shift more towards technical positions. After-all, it takes a good sales person a few hours / days to sell a solar solution and many more days to design, engineer and install.

Although the spread between commercial and technical positions are even, the solar team at Capital Green Talent are finding it more difficult to recruit strong technical & project managers than for most commercial positions. This trend will continue as the sector grows.

One solution to combat the shortage of technical & project management experience in the UK is to recruit this expertise from the continent, certainly while the UK sector is gaining its experience. With feed-in-tariffs around Europe being reduced or stopped and a lot of highly skilled technical and project managers are wondering what and where to go next, the UK is a logical step.  The last three technical positions filled by our team have been with Spanish and German candidates.

The regional breakdown doesn’t hold too many surprises. Circa 90% of all the solar positions in the UK are based in England, with almost 50% of those being based in the South East of England (including London).  Maybe a little surprising is how few positions seem to be in the South West, I guess once we see a lot of the planning consent granted to the large solar farms we will see this percentage increase.

While it’s not an exact science – we feel this solar job index will give us some interesting information over the coming year. Stay tuned.

About Capital Green and the author.

Capital Green Talent specialises in renewable energy and cleantech executive search and recruiting. Three consultants headed by Regan George specialise in Solar Recruitment across Europe and Asia. If you would like more information about their solar recruiting solutions, this index etc please don’t hesitate to contact the regan@capitalgreen.eu

For now we are not really seeing outright war, however smaller, less conspicuous battles are being fought, lost and won all around the country.

An experienced, target hitting, part of the furniture Sales Manager within an established solar business is headhunted into a well-funded early-stage/fast-growth company as Sales Director.

Not only are you getting the warm-fuzzy feeling as you sign the employment contract agreeing a 25% salary increase, more aggressive commission structure, latest E-Class etc. – You also have the distinct impression that your new company is truly going deliver on their promise of taking the market by storm – and you are going to be there in the front line.

Six months into the job, when your old work mate calls to ask “how the new job is going?” You can honestly say, “pretty bloody well”.

The best way of putting it is that you have gone from part of the furniture-to-hero in six months. The Sales Strategy you implemented is hitting the mark, the team you have recruited and are managing are above target, you are earning 40% more than this time last year and the founding directors of the firm have now taken you into their “inner circle” and treat you as a vital part of their business.

What is your ex-work colleague thinking now? His slightly itchy feet will now be so itchy that within a week or two they’ll be walking into a pub to have a “proper catch-up” over a beer.

And as timing would have it, you are looking for an additional Sales Manager. A couple of pints later, your ex-work colleague has agreed that he’d be better off working with you, after all he’s only ever felt like part of the furniture with your old company too.  Another quiet battle for talent won and lost.

It’s relatively easy for well-funded early-stage and fast-growth “players” with forward thinking founders to come into a market and attract unsung warriors from established firms and transform them into heroes.

Early-stage companies are small, lean and nimble enough to have the advantage when it comes to these small talent battles, I won’t try and weave a SAS metaphor into this…..

• The vision and ambitions of an early-stage company are often articulated better and sold with more passion, igniting a much higher level of excitement when a potential employee is considering moving.
• It’s a lot easier to have a flat-structure, showing a higher level of inclusion in an early-stage business to potential employees.
• Early-stage companies are often leaner (less overheads) so able to support higher salaries and more aggressive commissions.
• Founders of new and early-stage businesses are often more willing to offer share-options to key staff.

These new/newish organisations on the block are the early winners as the smaller battles for solar talent take place.

The other clear winners are the unsung warriors who after spending most of their career as “working parts of a bigger machine” are being recognised both professionally and financially for the importance of their contribution.

It’s pretty obvious who are losing these battles. While a number of the bigger, established solar firms are talking about increased employment numbers and growth they are certainly not talking about the key staff they are losing. I bet behind closed doors HR Managers and Directors are now moving employee retention up their agendas.

If you are a Line Manager, HR Manager or a Director in an established solar firm it’s imperative you are identifying your unsung warriors (those that given the right opportunity, support, resources etc. could be heroes) and start listening to them, then mapping a path (within your company) for them to reach their potential, professionally, financially and personally. If you don’t someone else will.

In our next blog in the series on the “war for solar talent”, we’ll suggest a methodology for identifying unsung warriors and the tactics and strategies to implement to help you retain your warriors.

Whilst I have always had a slight problem with the “war” metaphor, the term “war for talent” was coined in the late 90’s to refer to the increasingly competitive landscape for recruiting and retaining talented employees.

As the debate goes on about exactly how big the UK solar industry will grow to over the coming years, there is one certainty; the UK solar industry is facing a chronic skill shortage or what we in the industry call a “war for talent”.

The early signs are already here – many of the UK’s “established” solar firms, while growing are losing an extremely high number of their experienced staff to well-funded start-ups, dynamic home-grown early-stage solar companies and to the big German manufacturers & developers hitting on our shores.

Although we are not seeing outright war yet, there are dozens of many smaller less conspicuous battles being fought as this blog goes out.

If the impending “war for talent” is not high on the agendas of board rooms and executive suits (can I say “war rooms”) of any ambitious solar company in the UK, beware.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be writing a series on the “impending war” for Solar Talent.  Essentially how to win the small battles, to plan and fight against the onslaught and ensure victory

I started researching the UK solar job market in March 2009. The first site I go to when trying to get a handle on the number of jobs in a certain sector is www.indeed.co.uk. This site is what’s called a “job aggregator”, in simple terms indeed has technology which finds jobs with certain keywords on multiple job boards, career sections of corporate websites etc. and brings them back into their site.

In March 2009, when searching using the keyword “Solar” on www.indeed.co.uk, 700 jobs came back. Eighteen months later, when you search using the keyword “solar” www.indeed.co.uk comes back with 3400 jobs.  You don’t need to be a mathematician or a Management Consultant to spot there is a trend..

While sites like indeed and other job aggregator can’t be used to give you an accurate guide on the precise amount of “live and real” jobs in a market (too many duplicates etc.) the percentage increase from March 2009 to November 2010 is startling. We can safely assume that there not be many other “jobs” seeing such a massive increase as we battle our way through recession.

The above figures reflect the last eighteen months, what’s the future going to bring for the UK solar job market? Here is what some in the market are saying.

In October the Electronics, Sensors and Photonics Knowledge Transfer Network (ESP KTN) forecast that UK Solar Electricity industry could providing 150,000 jobs by 2016. Personally I think the ESP KTN figures are vastly inflated, and anyone with an acronym that long needs to be carefully considered.  One only needs to consider that the entire German solar industry is reported to employ around 150,000 people.

However, I feel much more realistic figures presented in a report in June by the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) claiming in excess of 100,000 people could be employed in the installation of solar across the country by 2030.  When we look beyond installation, up and down stream would think the entire UK solar industry could be employing around 140,000.

OK – not much need to talk more about the numbers, anyone involved in the UK solar industry today will already have a good feeling that we are on the start of a massive wave (a .green Tsunami!), how big, only time will tell.

However with growth, comes growing pains and already I am witnessing them.

How big do you think it will get?