What Are the Hottest Jobs in the EV Industry? EV Recruitment Has the Answers

Bill Pierce, Publisher EVinfo.net, Interviews Raymond McSpirit, Founder and CEO of EV Recruitment

Bill Pierce:

Thanks for taking the time today to do this interview Raymond. In my opinion, you are doing vitally important work for EV industry hiring managers, as well as job seekers.

First off, why did you start up EV recruitment and what’s your clean transportation energy background?

Raymond McSpirit:

I have been recruiting in the high-tech space for the last 10 years. Throughout my career, I’ve always been an electric vehicle enthusiast and more than just a technology enthusiast.

I had the opportunity to recruit in a lot of highly technical markets. I had a sprint in fuel cells and semiconductors, working with different transportation and engineering services companies.

When I initially started my first recruitment company, I wanted to specialize around a positive mission that also resulted in leaving a better tomorrow for our future. Promoting EVs is an important way we can fight climate change.

So a few years ago, I was very focused on water resources, where we did a lot of work for companies and multidisciplinary firms in California that were doing dams, pump stations, and I really enjoyed that.

And then it was just kind of a natural progression toward EVs. One candidate I was working with for a large dam project led me toward EVs, because of the amount of power required for the substations. The project actually had some EV exposure.

Then, after talking to the candidate about the market a few years ago, and doing some research, myself and my partner, Mohammed made the decision, we’re going to make a pivot to recruiting for the EV industry.

And there’s a lot of different companies throughout the ecosystem, throughout the manufacturing side, all the different tiers of suppliers and service providers and technology that I’ve had experience with through other areas of manufacturing recruitment.

So that’s really what caused us to jump into the EV recruiting space.

*(Image: Raymond McSpirit, CEO and Founder of EV Recruitment)*

Bill Pierce:

Okay, so I see on the EV Recruitment website that your clients include the OEM suppliers and engineering services companies. Can you tell us any big clients you’ve landed recently that we’d recognize?

Raymond McSpirit:

We work with a lot of companies throughout the EV charging landscape, DC fast charging companies, L2 charging and more. These include companies that are regional operators and managing those regional EV charging networks. Some examples in that area include Alphatronic, we’ve done a fair amount of work with, and another one is Xeal, that we have done a good amount of work with.

Not just on the charging side, but also on the vehicle side, we’ve done a lot of recruitment for the workforce for EV industry suppliers. I’ve really enjoyed working with a lot of these tier two suppliers, because in my opinion, they’re focused on the subsystems or certain kinds of power electronics or batteries, they are the true innovators that are driving the innovation of the combined systems that the OEMs make.

We’ve worked with companies in the DC to DC converter space, battery technology companies, companies that are doing high voltage cables and connectors, contract manufacturers for specialized components, equipment manufacturers for battery processing, and passivization.

We have a solid mix of clients throughout the manufacturing supply chain that are supporting both the electric vehicle and the charger.

Our third area is more engineering services on the infrastructure side.

There’s a lot of EV chargers that need to go into the ground.

I forget where I was seeing this recently, but Bill, you would probably know, how many DC fast chargers need to go into the ground for EVs?

Bill Pierce:

The government has a goal of 500,000 public chargers by 2030.

Raymond McSpirit:

So we’re talking about an extraordinary amount of chargers that need to go into the ground.

At the end of the day, there’s consolidation within the manufacturing side, a lot of engineering services, the turn key installation side and the maintenance and operations of the stations, will be done by regional players.

So, in those arenas, we work with telecom companies that are launching EV turnkey divisions. We’ve worked with other regional specialized players as well. So focus there would be construction folks, project managers, business unit leaders, sales, and leadership. That’s a focus for recent research of ours.

Bill Pierce:

Regarding charging, your client Xeal is doing some exciting stuff with real estate.

Another exciting company is CBRE, a very large real estate company. The company has its own in-house EV charging division, which is pretty cool.

So the next question is, I think you’ve already touched on this, but if you serve other markets as well as EV and what are those, could you give us more details?

Raymond McSpirit:

Currently we’ve been serving other markets other than EV. We’ve been doing a lot of work on the energy transition overall, a lot of battery storage and microgrid companies. Some of our tier two companies have positions that cover a few different product focuses, other areas of power electronics.

Our core focus at EV Recruitment is EV, but we also serve the energy sector as a whole.

Bill Pierce:

Okay, and so there’s a slowdown right now on EV, not in sales, but in sales growth, which a lot of people get mixed up. Do you see that sales growth slowdown affecting your business at all? Are you seeing a slowdown in hiring?

Raymond McSpirit:

Yes. Definitely. But, there are pockets of growth. We are seeing some more of the commoditized product manufacturers where there’s a lot of inventory on shelves.

Right now, there’s an over-anticipation or an aggressive projection on sales from a lot of these very large moving OEMs, from planning a couple years ago.

They obviously have a deep grip on their supply chain and their tiers. A lot of them had sourced products and supplies that they have in inventory.

There’s definitely been a slowdown in the EV charging space. We’re working with a fair amount of new EV charging players.

Bill Pierce:

Can you tell us what those pockets of growth are, which ones are seeing less of a slowdown right now? Which ones are doing more hiring?

Raymond McSpirit:

Some hiring more are EV turnkey companies. EV charging companies that have some layer of IP or integrated solution.

For example the ones that are bringing to market a battery storage solution or an EV charging solar canopy.

We work with clients in that field. And we have a few other client types in that arena. Some others deal with the physical charger, but it’s that tokenized access and remote connectivity that sits on top of the charger that stands out.

There’s growth in the battery space, which covers both the vehicle and battery storage. Some software companies are doing well with operations and maintenance, definitely some opportunity there with some of these changes for companies to kind of pick up.

And then, some larger charging centers in California on either the fleet side or the consumer side. For example, a company that is doing 40 DC fast charging stations at one location, making it more of an experience center.

Bill Pierce:

So, the big news recently was the Tesla Supercharger layoffs, have you seen any of that team coming to you for job opportunities?

Raymond McSpirit:

Yes, we’ve talked to a lot of people from Tesla. Some of our clients are interested in certain people from Tesla.

The areas that we’re seeing demand from our clients for certain types of Tesla candidates are individuals that had been working on the software or firmware side within EVSE. Or project developer candidates, preferably that have an electrical engineering design background.

Bill Pierce:

I’m always optimistic about growth in EV. Do you agree that in the next couple of years, we’re going to see a big growth in hiring along with the growth in the industry?

Raymond McSpirit:

Yes, except that I think that the rest of this year could be tough. As business leaders strategize over a new long term plan around a new federal administration that comes in, and we kind of see how this shakes out with the elections coming up. Many are waiting to see what happens before doing lots of hiring.

With Tesla leaving the charging space more open to competition, that obviously creates a lot of opportunity for other companies to do the work. But if they come back in, who’s going to pick up some of these O&M contracts? Some of my clients were bidding with Tesla on some projects.

Now those projects go to the other companies. So I think hiring could get worse before it gets better over the next six months or so.

I think that with any high growth industry, we had a lot of companies that were just focused on grabbing quick market share and were losing money. But then with the adoption that they were forecasting into their projections to burn caught up with them because it wasn’t there, so a lot of them were kind of left out of cash.

There’s obviously new players entering that have learned from the mistakes that some of these companies made, and technologies improving as well.

We are very optimistic about the long-term growth in the EV space, it’s just a matter of when. But I think it could get worse this year before it gets better.

Bill Pierce:

Next is, does your team specialize? Do any of the team specialize in EV or does the whole team basically handle the EV aspect?

Raymond McSpirit:

Yes, we’re fully dedicated to the EV and energy landscape.

Part of my commitment to serve the industry was to have a team that understands the space, from the ecosystem standpoint, and the technical standpoint. Our two main recruiters studied engineering, one studied mechanical engineering, the other one studied industrial engineering. These backgrounds really help us on some of these highly technical searches and the research that we do for transferable product lines and skill sets. These are definitely extremely important, especially when you’re head-hunting candidates out of other industries into unique EV positions.

Our director of sales spent five years in the EV turnkey markets on the project side.

So, he’s very knowledgeable about the different systems and the whole turnkey side, how it works with utilities, and what are the decision drivers. That’s really helped us get buy-in and get initial looks from prospective clients.

Bill Pierce:

I agree, it definitely helps recruiters to have industry knowledge. Definitely you’d get better results that way. So what about the challenges have you faced so far and how have you addressed those?

Raymond McSpirit:

We definitely had some challenges with some of our clients. Some of the clients that we’ve worked with were startups and not all of them are still around. The ones that are still around are not growing at present, or scaling back, due to the growth slowdown.

So, it’s definitely been a challenge in this market overall. We’ve definitely had a fair amount of clients that failed to raise funding, decided to scale back on hiring, internal divisions focused on EV or the larger company decided to hold off on their EV initiatives for now.

So we’ve definitely dealt with some challenges, but it’s about staying focused on the growth areas and doubling down there.

So it definitely took some time for us to pivot. But now we are just trying to stay in front of the open opportunities as much as possible.

Bill Pierce:

Can you give us some of the hot jobs right now in the industry that are the top ones that you’re seeing more openings for, especially what jobs your clients are hiring for?

Raymond McSpirit:

Yes, so overall, we recruit from top to bottom, we do executive work. So I’ve done a Chief Operations Officer Search, a CEO search, business unit leaders, starting at the top, and working down from there.

We do a lot of work on the sales side, Chief Revenue Officer, VP of Sales, Director of Business Development, a lot of regional market-driven account executives, regional sales managers, and then on the technical side from both the manufacturing and then project management within the turn-key market side, electrical engineers, product development, operations, process engineers, applications, etc.

I invite job seekers to go on our website and get an idea of some of the other positions that we recruit.

Right now, the positions that are in most demand are, on the senior project manager side for EV infrastructure and sales. Everyone’s always hiring in sales, generally.

When most companies restructure or roll out a new product, they’ll need somebody with that experience or if they’re entering a new channel, new market, they’ll need somebody with that perfectly matched experience.

So those things have been active for us. Also, a fair amount of newly created leadership roles from companies that have changed strategies and directions that need someone to deliver on it.

Bill Pierce:

And the last one I have is, what advice would you have for people trying to enter the EV space that don’t have experience, which is most of them I would believe, because it’s a young industry.

Raymond McSpirit:

Yes, I mean, you have to start somewhere and it starts with your genuine interest and just curiosity about the industry as a whole. There are a lot of publications that have a lot of insights into certain kinds of products in the EV industry, which are a good place to start.

To start with, for a job seeker, look at what is your background and experience so far. Then taking the time to figure out where that experience is transferable to the EV market, and then taking the time to get in front of, and meet the players. LinkedIn is a great way to reach out and meet people in the industry that could help get you hired.

I was on the “Out of Spec” podcast, and one of the things mentioned was, if you’re a job seeker and you want to get into the space, you could go to trade shows.

Go out to a trade show, get a ticket, go up to the booths, ask them about their product, introduce yourself, leave a good impression, and then follow up from there.

Each time you’re learning about something, you’re bringing that knowledge to the next opportunity. Contacts that you have already in the industry bring you one step closer, so getting hired is not just going to happen on its own, only rarely. But, I think there’s a lot of resources and there’s a large community out there that people could tap into, learn more about and get a foot in the door.

Bill Pierce:

Thanks again Raymond for taking the time for this interview. I believe this is very valuable insight for hiring managers and job seekers in the EV industry. Thanks for your important work. Meeting and working with top leaders in the EV industry is a great honor, and one of my favorite things about running EVinfo.net. Visit EV Recruitment’s site.

Bill Pierce

Electric Vehicle Marketing Consultant, Writer and Editor. Publisher EVinfo.net.
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