Category Archives: engineering

Intel Workers Need To Ready Quantitative Resumes!

Due to lower than expected fourth-quarter profit, Intel, a household name in semiconductor R&D and manufacturing, is planning to lay off 5,400 workers or almost 5% of their 107,600 total, worldwide employees! One culprit was Intel’s server chips area, which grew less than expected.

Intel plans to lay off nearly 5,400 workers in 2014

This is in direct contrast to the last 7 years where their employment has increased steadily. In fact, since 2006 when then CEO Paul Otellini engineered a restructuring, Intel’s recruiting has soared. Therefore, many engineering recruiters, scientific recruiters, IT recruiters and technical recruiters had made a fortune from just focusing on technical recruitment for Intel!

However, Intel’s priorities have changed since last May when Brian Krzanich took over as CEO. For example, Mr. Krazanich has increased Intel’s efforts to develop semiconductor chips for wearable devices, smartphones, smartwatches and tablets. As a result, he has planned to not only reduce employment, but also shift employees to different jobs within Intel. This has meant that many executive recruiters will have to look elsewhere for revenues. It also brings up the question, “What should the over 5000 displaced Intel workers do next?”

One thing they need to do immediately is develop a quantitative resume. As part of this process, our engineering recruiting agency recommends including a lot of “numbers.” Numbers include quantitative accomplishments, dollar savings, percentage improvements and patents. Unfortunately, most employees create qualitative resumes (e.g. I was part of the team that implemented the new semiconductor manufacturing robots) instead of quantitative ones (e.g. I designed the new A47B Fanuc robot, which saved Intel $45,600 per day in direct labor costs and reduced manufacturing errors by 27%). Please go to http://www.strategicsearch.com/interview-preparation-tips/interview-preparation-tips.php and view for more details.

Changing the pattern from a qualitative to a quantitative resume is not easy. It takes a lot of work and discipline. However, internal management recruiters at hiring companies and external executive recruitment firms salivate when they see “numbers.” Also, many job boards and engineer recruitment aids are designed to pick up keywords with a quantitative focus. Therefore, it behooves not only the displaced Intel workers, but also anyone looking for a new job to put in the extra time to make your resume quantitative!