A specialist engineering recruitment business has marked successfully placing in excess of 600 candidates in the past three years with the appointment of a new director. Envisage Group, which encompasses Envisage Recruitment as well as Envisage Concept Design & Engineering, Envisage Technologies and Envisage Classic & Bespoke has appointed Matt Harris, an industry veteran with 22 years of recruitment experience, specialising in the design, manufacturing, and engineering sectors.

As the UK engineering industry continues to struggle with a shortage of skills, Matt Harris has been tasked with injecting new life into the sector, sourcing the very best talent to drive future industry growth.

According to the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET), the UK engineering sector is in the midst of a major skills crisis. A recent survey shows that 71% of the engineering workforce who are experiencing skills shortages lack engineering or technical skills. Furthermore, 96% of engineering employers who have identified a skills shortage within general job applicants say this skills deficit impacts their business in some way.

Over the past 13 years, Envisage Group has bucked the trend, sourcing and successfully placing thousands of candidates into UK engineering roles; some within the wider Envisage Group. In fact, the Group began as a sole recruitment organisation 16 years ago, later spinning off into engineering services using many of the skills it nurtured itself.

The right candidates
With Matt Harris’ appointment as director, the business has sent a clear message of intent that it is determined to support the engineering sector through the current skills shortage by attracting and placing the right candidates at every level, right through to SLT and executive level appointments.

Matt Harris said: “I am very excited to join Envisage Recruitment and help take the business to the next level. We all know how challenging it is to access skills. Competition is intense and the talent pool has shrunk. It is more important than ever to partner with a specialist recruitment business embedded within your market with its finger on the pulse of industry trends and who are entrenched within the appropriate candidate network.”

Envisage Group offers bespoke engineering services to global clients from its facilities in the UK, US and India. Its recruitment division can tap into the group’s decades of experience within the UK’s engineering sectors, supporting OEMs on delivering high-level projects. These relationships and contacts mean that Envisage Recruitment is ideally placed to understand the demands of its clients and access the very best talent.

Mr Harris added: “We Are already well positioned to support talent attraction and retention. I look forward to continuing to extend our reach and collaborating with all stakeholders to ensure British design, manufacturing, and engineering has the skills it needs to succeed on the global stage.”