Chipmakers Rally in Talent War

　　The semiconductor industry needs a lot of good engineers and a makeover to attract them. A veteran executive put out a call to action at the Industry Strategy Summithere to help launch an initiative to do it.

　　“We were a clearing house for the best and brightest once, but today it’s a war for talent, and we are a step or two behind,” said Dan Durn, the chief financial officer of Applied Materials. “Today, kids dream about Google, Facebook, and Apple; they don’t dream about us, and we need to change that.”

　　“This is personal for me because it’s my story,” he continued, recounting how his father brought home an early chip made at Western Electric as the brains for a U.S. missile.

　　“That sparked something in me; it was the seed of a dream I am living today. My dream crystalized before I walked into a college,” said Durn, an engineer by training who rose to become CFO of Globalfoundries and NXP before joining Applied.

　　Durn called for attendees to join an initiative being developed in the SEMI trade group. It will include new committees on attracting young and diverse employees and a series of events reaching out to secondary schools.

　　“I want to win the battle for the hearts and minds of high school students.”

　　To do that, Durn and others believe that the industry needs to get back to its Wild West roots.

　　“We need to revive the founder-CEO culture that drove our early days. As our industry matured, operational efficiencies and a whole set of different DNA took hold — it was necessary for us as an industry, but the pendulum needs to swing back.”

　　About 85% of chip vendors need new kinds of talent to keep pace with the rise of digital operations powered by automated systems, big data, and machine learning. However, 77% of them report a shortage of talent, particularly for EEs, according to studies by Deloitte Consulting done for the SEMI trade group.

　　“The semiconductor industry is pushing the boundaries of physics with devices four to five atoms thick, yet there’s a perception that it’s old and dated,” said Chris Richard, a principal at Deloitte. “EEs are the hardest positions to fill because a lot of companies are looking at the same talent pool.”

　　Intel and Samsung have high ratings with recent grads, but so do AirBnB, Netflix, LinkedIn, and other tech companies. Meanwhile, “the list of the bottom 15 companies in brand recognition by students is dominated by semiconductor companies that most college grads have not heard about,” said Richard, including ASML, KLA-Tencor, Lam, SK Hynix, and TSMC.

　　“A big part of the challenge is in awareness — we need to help them see the path.”

　　That shouldn’t be difficult. “We make air travel safer, healthcare more predictable, we have an easy story to tell,” said Durn.

　　What’s more, despite its challenges, the chip industry is well-positioned, he argued.

　　“We are on the cusp of something really big with AI and have the potential to ship tens, if not hundreds of millions, of units. This is not consumer discretionary — it’s as big as the next industrial revolution,” he said, pointing to The Economist’s declaration that data is the new oil.