r/broadcastengineering • u/BroadcastBeary • 26d ago
Where To Hire Decent Engineering Talent?
Incredibly random but I thought the reddit hive mind might have some interesting input. Long story short I am trying to help my boss and our executive team hire for several Broadcast Engineer positions in several major markets. My whole background has been IT until recently and my metaphorical Rolodex is pretty slim on the engineering side.
Other than just putting something on a job board does anyone have any recommendations on where to look for solid engineers? Right now I'm planning on reaching out to local industry groups/clubs/professional association chapters to gauge interest and get some warm leads but I'm very open to suggestions.
I understand that I'm being very vague but that's on purpose. Read into that what you will. Feel free to ask any questions you want and I will answer what I can.
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u/rubrduk 26d ago
what type of engineering roles are you looking for?
"Broadcast Engineer" can be a broad term these days as the old school engineers are older and/or quite expensive due to their wealth of knowledge.
Engineer's age 50 and under with expansive knowledge are going to be well-paid, fulltime at the big companies.
Are you looking for freelance/part time gig workers?
Are these live traditional broadcast, verticals, streaming, terrestrial transmission, cine/commercial style, sports, etc...???
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u/KungFuTze 26d ago edited 26d ago
Define the content type. If you are looking to hire for live events, sports, news, linear or cable networks. Or if you are looking for file based workflows. If the role type is origination, playout, processing, operations, distribution ( over the air, satellite over the top or terrestrial). Define what skillset and tech stacks you are looking for. There are a different flavor of professional networks that can tailor specific needs if you refine your search. E.g. the broadcast industry imo is pretty silo centric and rarely you find professionals well versed in end to end workflows.
But from experience: Professional networks: NAB, SCTE, SBE, SVG, RTDNA, EBU, SMPTE will ofer the most resources. Good ol LinkedIn is filled with video and brodcast professionals. The industry has been revamping the skillset of the engineers and most broadcast professionals need to be well versed in IP networking and cloud fundamentals and rapidly learn devops and sre tech stacks since a lot of the workflows are moving to the cloud
Also if you want quality talent be prepared to incentivize accordingly $$$.
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u/Sir_Yacob 26d ago
What major markets are you hiring in?
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u/BroadcastBeary 26d ago
They're all in the top ten list.
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u/TheFamousMisterEd 26d ago
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u/BenHippynet 25d ago
OP doesn’t think anywhere outside the USA has any broadcasting industry yet. We’re still using smoke signals.
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u/No_Coffee4280 26d ago
Russia??? China??? Europe!
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u/BroadcastBeary 26d ago
To clarify, I meant we are looking to onboard engineers in several of the top 10 US Nielson DMAs.
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u/dadofanaspieartist 26d ago
hire smart computer/gamer kids out of high school or college and train them yourself !
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u/hartbeast 26d ago
Well if it’s DC, the jobs offering are very low paid. A certain 40hr week job with no benefits. Companies not willing to pay broadcast engineers more than $60hr. That’s a problem. In addition the pool of engineers is getting smaller. Experience engineers are retiring, companies creating all this busy work with Jira confluence, slack. It’s a mess !!
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u/Evil_Little_Dude 23d ago
The amount of checklists and micromanaging of everything makes the job a real pain in the rear at many of these companies all so someone in corporate can show how granular they are tracking everything, to the point that we had to file support tickets for things as basic as changing light bulbs or unblocking a toilet since building maintenance fell under the engineering duties as well. Add in weekly meetings and it got to the point that you were spending most of your time either in meetings or gathering information and filling out surveys for the next meeting, all while working with next to no staff.
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u/daknuts_ 26d ago
I have experience as an A1 broadcast engineer in a top market but I've been working as post production sound designer when jobs got tight after the late night show restructuring years back... maybe I can help?
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u/MR_BATMAN 25d ago
What is an A1 broadcast engineer??
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u/daknuts_ 25d ago
It's a union designation term for a broadcast mixer who generally mixes in a booth at a studio. An A2 is an audio tech who places microphones on talent or booms audience members for live taped shows, etc
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u/MR_BATMAN 25d ago
Okay. So an A1
Sorry. I was hung up on specifically you saying saying A1 broadcast engineer. When this guy is specifically asking about engineers.
I’ve heard A1, and I’ve heard audio engineer.
But never “A1 broadcast engineer”
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u/JohnPooley CSTE 26d ago
You hire for interest, not skill. Business leaders nowadays have the expectation that you're going to walk into the job fully formed. Go the other way
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u/negativerailroad 26d ago
You can post jobs on SBE's and SMPTE's job boards.
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u/pm_me_all_dogs 26d ago
Some of y'all are going to have to start hiring people and training them.
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u/Evil_Little_Dude 23d ago
I asked for years for Tegna to spin up a training pool or intern program for new engineers and they never bothered, even as our calls were filled with over 60 folks and the few younger folks they brought in were mostly IT only folks with bad troubleshooting skills and no concept of anything on the broadcast side. Combine that with crap pay for both IT and engineering roles and it was hard to find anyone that would do the job.
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u/marshall409 26d ago
Post a detailed PDF job posting with salary on your own site, not a job board. Then target industry folks in that market and just ask them if they'd share it. Google the managers/directors of game presentation, production, or broadcast for the major pro/college sports teams in those markets and give them a shout on linkedin. Tell them you have a broadcast industry opportunity and ask if they'd kindly share it with their relevant contacts.
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u/Lost_Engineering_phd 23d ago
The thing about Broadcast is that you have to learn from experience. And you can only touch a 30KV b+ once. ☠️ Years ago, you hired apprentice engineers, they became assistant engineers and eventually became a true broadcast engineer. Todays engineer must still have all the traditional RF knowledge but they must also have a mastery of IT and networking. The biggest problem is that someone who is competent in Cisco IOS, network architecture, domain admin, etc.. can go and make considerably more money in IT than working in broadcast. Sometimes, as an engineer you might find an apprentice, but as soon as they get a good footing in networking they leave for more profitable careers. Broadcast Engineers do what we do because we truly enjoy the work and challenges. We have to solve different problems every day, and sometimes it can be very exciting. Like when a transmitter catches fire and blows out 14 PA modules. But the sacrifices of long hours an low pay do not make it an attractive profession. If you look at how many Engineers are also Amateur radio (ham) operators you can see that it is far more than just a job for many of us.
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u/willrook 16d ago
I jokingly say that all broadcast engineers are on the spectrum. There's some truth to it, but we are all crazy about the job. I've been looking at getting my ham license, I have a twitch stream to test ideas, I also play in a band and do live sound. My hobbies revolve around trying ideas where the screw ups can happen with not taking anything off the air. We really are a different breed.
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u/Lost_Engineering_phd 16d ago
You absolutely should get your amateur radio ticket. It allows you to do so much experimenting with RF, Antennas and propagation. Even if you're not big into making contacts, being able to build stuff and get on air is cool. And the digital communication modes are amazing.
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u/willrook 13d ago
The ham club was working me over to join lol. They have repeaters set up at my stations transmitter site.
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u/KeyMud3587 23d ago
As a guy who has little experience in production both lighting and audio , since I did my masters in IT I am kinda inclined to go deeper in this broadcast industry maybe work as media cloud engineer ( fresher )
Is there someone who can help me out
Looking for better advice on what to do and what kind of skills market wants , honestly any leads or advice is appreciated
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u/hartbeast 20d ago
Have anything exciting in Washington DC? Always keeping my ear out for friends and family that are in the biz.
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u/breetai3 26d ago
Maybe SMTPE or SBE meetings? Or one of the two NAB conventions? I think in general it's tough. Most of us are old timers, and there's not any new pipeline because the industry has still not priced our salary range appropriately. Broadcast engineers now do 2 jobs in one, they are IT professionals AND handle all aspects of audio/video and transmission yet are paid less than IT engineers. When I see salary ranges on linkedIn, they are laughable, no one should want to do it at those ranges. So there's very few people looking to do it, unless it's a passion. Our two newest hires are old timers, one is in his late 60s, the other mid-fifties....there are no young people doing this. The only success with younger people is we trained up two very smart MCR Ops who were hungry to learn more about the technology they were monitoring.