Elia jobs

Nowadays, finding young engineers is quite a challenge. Fortunately, more and more young people are opting for technical study programmes; they also see that the digital and technological wave is flooding virtually every sector. And if their dream is to make a real social impact, then an engineering degree seems like a direct route to that goal.

Who?
David Zenner trained as an electromechanical engineer and is Head of Customer Relations at Elia.
Vincent Flon is a technical engineer specialising in energy and is responsible for innovation policy at Fluxys.
Federica Meneghesso is a biomedical engineer and works as a Customer Support Director at Roche Diagnostics Belgium.
Tim Van Dijck is a technical engineer and is Operations Manager at Deme.
 

In the most recent VDAB overview of shortage professions, not a single type of engineer still features in the top ten. Is the rapid rise of new technologies attracting more young people to embark on engineering studies?

Federica Meneghesso: “To be honest, the VDAB figures surprise me a little. Last year it took us between six and twelve months to fill a vacancy for an engineer. We adopted a creative approach to this problem and set up our own academy at Roche a few years ago. We offer young people who have a technical background but do not have an engineering degree further training. Lab technicians, for example. They are coached by experienced engineers. They even gain experience abroad. It works really well.”
Vincent Flon: “At Fluxys, we don’t feel that there are currently enough engineers either, quite the opposite. But I do recognise Roche's approach: we too are more pragmatic. We initially look for candidates whose profile, mindset and pattern of values are a good match with those of the company. We provide them with further training ourselves. We haven't gone as far as to recruit candidates for engineering positions who have not obtained the relevant degree, but intrinsic values have become much more important in the recruitment process.”
David Zenner: “Attracting young engineers remains a major challenge, despite the somewhat surprising VDAB figures. For example, we are highly committed to a number of support programmes, ranging from work placements for students to internships.”
Tim Van Dijck: “Fortunately, at Deme the international nature of our activities plays to our advantage to some extent. Those who work for us as engineers usually have an affinity with the end product. The rather old-fashioned image of an engineer sitting at their desk all day is miles away from the tasks of engineers at our firm.” 

You’re right: a job as an engineer had a somewhat dusty image for years. What are the most exciting or socially relevant topics you are working on? Young people might not be aware of them.

David Zenner: “A company like Elia is in the driving seat of the entire energy transition. For many young people, to be able to contribute to that genuinely has to be an exciting prospect. Today’s major social challenges – in which new technology is almost always part of the solution – also encourage more young people to opt for a technical study programme. There is a social trend towards greater sustainability, and the technical profiles relate to this.”
Vincent Flon: “As an insider, I can't judge very well whether or not our job has become sexier, but I'm convinced that companies that pursue a social objective have more appeal. We no longer build machines today, we develop machines with which we can achieve social change. And indeed, when we ask young people why they would like to join Fluxys, the energy transition scores particularly high. Just like the observation that, as a system operator, we provide society with a crucial service.” 
Federica Meneghesso: “I totally agree. As a global pharmaceutical company, we have a direct impact on the daily lives of millions of people. For young people, this appears to be a major incentive for wanting to join us. Anyone who works for us has an impact, which has been convincingly demonstrated over the past two years.”

Engineers and innovation naturally go hand in hand, but what form does this innovation take in 2022? Is open innovation becoming more important, for example in the form of cooperation with other sectors or with the government?

Tim Van Dijck: “While innovation used to focus primarily on technology, we have noticed that the sustainability aspect has now become increasingly important. Many new technologies serve a higher purpose. From coastal protection to wind turbines that can be placed further away from the coast, to the energy transition. As a result, there will effectively be more cooperation with other parties, but at the same time the entire company will be forced to think much more out of the box than it did ten or so years ago. From now on, almost every major innovation must be placed in a broader context.”
David Zenner: “Co-creation as well as customer engagement have been gaining in importance. In 2022, for example, Elia is working closely with the construction sector and with actors in the field of mobility. This much larger band width opens up many new perspectives, both for newcomers and for people who have been working in the company for years.”
Vincent Flon: “The idea that innovation takes shape somewhere in a back room has long been outdated. Interaction with the company’s entire ecosystem continues to grow on a daily basis. We are building new value chains and more and more players are part of that. All this not only gives the company a new impetus; it stimulates creativity among our people.”

Roche is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world and of course, largely focuses on innovation. Yet that innovation is often less visible to outsiders. Does this make it more difficult to attract young engineers?

Federica Meneghesso: “For us, the innovation process is indeed firmly integrated in the company: approximately 14% of our total turnover is spent on research and development every year. To give you an idea, in the last 18 months we've introduced 18 new products to the market, that's crazy. A large part of the innovation we apply in developing new medicines takes place outside the company. In partnerships with research centres, universities, hospitals and small start-ups. A lot of people don't know that. At the same time, there is a trend in which the patient - as the end user - is increasingly involved in this innovation. So our whole innovation model is changing rapidly and the pandemic has accelerated that. Digitisation, for example, now ensures that we are looking for very different profiles than we did in the past.”

Does this also apply in other sectors? Do engineers have to meet different criteria today than was the case ten years ago?

Vincent Flon: “I actually think engineers today must be open to a much broader interaction, even with people who don't have the same technical background. So the importance of soft skills has certainly increased. The days of ‘I design a product and someone else takes it to the people’ are definitely behind us. This is partly why we are very committed to internal mobility. If you deploy people regularly in other departments of the company, they start thinking more broadly.”
David Zenner: “Companies work within much broader ecosystems and that requires a different mindset from engineers. Designing the best possible product from a technical perspective is no longer sufficient; they now have to incorporate many other aspects in their design.” 
Tim Van Dijck: “We shouldn't expect every engineer to become a kind of entrepreneur within the company, but it is possible and acceptable. Nowadays, for those who have their own ideas there are effective platforms to launch and further develop them. I see that engineers no longer want to tick off task lists, they mainly want to take responsibility. And that is very much in line with the social impact they are striving for.”

Specifically, how or in which areas can engineers really contribute to positive social change with your firm?

Federica Meneghesso: “Flexibility and agility, combined with an increasingly important role for new technologies such as AI, robotics or machine learning, will be crucial in our sector in the coming years. This means that engineers with a wide range of technical backgrounds will provide ever greater added value in specific areas. Our sector – and therefore also the profiles and technical expertise we are looking for – will change dramatically in the coming years.”
Vincent Flon: “A company like Fluxys is, of course, a vessel full of expertise when it comes to energy transport or the development of new networks, but I expect young engineers to perhaps demonstrate greater flexibility and think more out of the box. We sometimes have to think slightly more in relation to the market. There is also, of course, the whole digitisation aspect. Behind our impressive physical infrastructure is a digital interface that is gaining in importance and that responds to the new needs and expectations of our customers. I think it is extremely challenging for young engineers to be able to reflect alongside them and subsequently develop new applications.”
David Zenner: “For Elia, the answer is short and simple: anyone who starts working with us will contribute to one of the greatest social challenges of the coming decades. In concrete terms, large-scale electrification means that you must be able to integrate many sources of green energy in the power grid as seamlessly and optimally as possible. And in the long term, we will of course also have to succeed in temporarily storing all this new energy somewhere and in managing energy consumption better, depending on electricity generation at the time.”
Tim Van Dijck: “Innovation and value creation are key to Deme’s corporate culture, and I have the feeling that this is particularly appealing to many young people in 2022. Our track record over the past ten years shows that the future is always relatively open for us. We have evolved from a traditional dredging company to become a very multidisciplinary company, and anyone who joins us today as an engineer cannot predict what he or she will be working on in ten years’ time.”