Developing tomorrow reliability engineers

The reliability engineering scene in Australia is a bit stale. By that I mean that nobody is actually doing anything to drive new talent into the industry. Companies are all chasing the established professionals, there is more work than people, and you end up with a situation where a lot of demand is chasing a few very talented people... and nobody is injecting new blood into the game.

Concerning and all headed towards an obvious end.

Added to this is the parasitic labor hire industry. Treating skilled people as commodities, dropping them as soon as a client has any issues, and competing with each other on price. Again, no efforts at all to inject new talent into the industry - just the urge to earn fees off the expertise of others for what is fundamentally an introduction service.

People who have had to bully, push, elbow and work hard to develop the skill set they are able to offer.

it all stinks...

My company is not going to do that. Sure, we will have our share of contractors, and one or two high level "reliability ninjas". But the goal is to get new and talented people into the discipline. 

Mechanics, electricians who are motivated and have done well, along with graduates looking for a career into niche areas of the industry.

Young professionals who I can send either through the remote education course at Monash (3 years) to get their reliability engineering degree - Or through the Business Asset Management post graduate degree (2 years) run by the University of Western Australia.

They leave early then they owe me the cash, they finish and decide to leave then good luck to them, that was the idea anyway and hopefully I will have produced some good and talented people on the way.

It isn't the "grab a warm body" business model that has been adopted by many labor hire firms parading as consultants, but hopefully the investment in inspired people will pay dividends in terms of sustainable business relationships.

All very exciting stuff...your thoughts?