Difficult economic times or not, Europe is still facing a shortage of engineers in the most diverse areas and as baby boomers move into their deserved golden retirement, the shortage of people and skills becomes more of an even increasing issue. Can the solution come from Russia?

In a recent study by Universum, 26% of the Russian Engineers are keen on pursuing an international career and 16% considered “the opportunity to relocate abroad” one of the most important attractiveness factors in a job offer. In a 2007 study by the EU-Russia Centre, 29% of the Russians considered themselves as European and one third sees Europe as a neighbour and partner with whom a long-term relationship should be developed and enhanced. But are Russian engineers ready to work for European companies?

Within the six million students attending Russia’s 1,304 institutions of higher education, it is possible to find high quality Universities and top talent that are ready to embrace the western world business environment and challenges. In fact, for the last 10 years around 500,000 to 800,000 Russian Scientists have left the country for long-term work experiences abroad and almost none have returned home, says Viktor Kalinushkin, a Trade Union Chairman. Furthermore, and according to Universum, the global leader in Employer Branding, Russian Engineers are one of the very few talent groups that do not consider work/life balance as the most important career goal – instead, 51,3% of the students consider that being a technical or functional expert is what boosts their motivation. Furthermore, 73,7% of this talent group considers “professional training and development” the most important job characteristic, which demonstrates a clear goal of continuous improvement and the ability to face the technical challenges put forward by European companies.

Will Europe turn to Russia in search for talented engineers? And if so, which companies will benefit from this new talent source? In the study by Universum, big consumer brands like Nokia, BMW, Microsoft and Google seem to take the upper hand. The future will reveal the winners of this new war for talent.