BAE’s Big Push for Skilled Trades Starts with Orion in Dunfermline - A Spotlight

With the recent announcement that BAE Systems has been selected to provide the Norwegian government with superior anti-submarine Type 26 Frigates, the focus will now be on the skilled labour required to fulfil the project.

This is where Orion Group’s Dunfermline team comes to the fore, as they help BAE source the talent. With years of experience in shipbuilding recruitment, including electricians, sheet metal workers, fabricators, and welders, the Dunfermline team will be actively sourcing the talent required for the project.

With nearly four decades of dedicated expertise in technical, engineering, and skilled trades recruitment for international projects, Orion Group offers a comprehensive lineup of services, from sourcing and managing highly specialised, project-critical talent to overseeing compliance globally.

Orion Office Spotlight – Dunfermline 

With 24 physical locations around the globe, and active in 68 countries, Orion Group is well placed at providing a “multi” service, sector, discipline and regional offerings. While each of our offices have built relationships to fulfil our client’s recruitment needs, each location has unique set of services and solutions. This makes them a trusted recruitment delivery partner in their specialised area.

In this new series of blogs, we’ll look at some of the different Orion locations, focusing on what they do, what areas they specialise in, and what makes them so good at what they do.

First on the list to kick off the series is the Dunfermline office, located in the southeast of Scotland.

Fife’s Recruitment Partner

Opened in 2000, Orion Group’s Dunfermline office is a little bit different from our other offices around the world. While the Houston team naturally focuses on energy and oil and gas recruitment, and the Chicago and Cork teams delivers on Life Science recruitment, the Dunfermline recruitment consultants are kept busy by being proactive across a variety of sectors and industries within their local area as well as nationwide.

What Sectors Do They Cover

The Dunfermline office was opened to provide recruitment services to the Rosyth naval dockyard. Since then, the team in Dunfermline have continued to supply skilled trades personnel to Rosyth, as well as helping clients in the Fife and Central Belt area fill numerous positions in the Nuclear, Manufacturing, and Defence sectors.

The shipbuilding industry never stays still for long, as witnessed with the aforementioned UK/Norway naval trade deal. That’s why our dedicated team helps clients with the provision of tradespeople like welders, fabricators, electricians, and slingers, to keep the industry supplied and moving forward when they need it.

Outside of these core industries, the Dunfermline team have provided critical staff to a wide range of industries and business such as charities, the NHS, print and packaging, dog food production, and flooring companies, to name but a few, enforcing their reputation that when something comes up that is outside of their usual wheelhouse, they’ll find a way around it!

Range of Roles

The diversity of roles they cater for is linked to the time they’ve spent building relationships with local manufacturing and production companies over the years. While concentrating on skilled trades and blue-collar roles, the Dunfermline team are also known to for the provision of white collar and executive roles.

This is down to the levels of trust the team have built with their clients. Their clients know that they will put the same amount of effort and dedication to the acquisition of talent whatever is asked for, either contract or permanent, onshore or offshore, from secretaries to production managers to C-Level professionals - going above and beyond to find the right candidates every time with minimum fuss. At the end of the day, they can be relied upon to take the pain away from the client and deliver the goods on time.

What are Dunfermline’s Strengths?

Role Diversity

From office and commercial staff in manufacturing and offshore engineers in oil and gas, to skilled trades personnel in Naval shipbuilding and project managers in the nuclear industry – Dunfermline has you covered.

Trust

Central to the Dunfermline team, and a core value of Orion Group itself, is trust. Trust in delivering on time, trust in delivering the right candidates, and trust in the shared goals between the client and themselves. That’s why the team have clients who have been with them for decades. They come back repeatedly (and this is often through the operations team directly, not HR hiring teams - so they’re dealing with those at the coalface) with more demanding roles to fill, knowing the partnership is a relationship built on trust first and foremost.

JOSCAR Registered

When working on any defence contract, suppliers require certification to streamline supplier qualification and compliance processes. This applies to recruitment in the defence sector also. Orion Group has recently attained the JOSCAR registration accreditation, enabling our clients to continue our relationship with confidence and confidentiality.

Speed of Hiring

Due to the local hiring environment around Fife and the Central Belt, speed is of the essence in recruiting the right people within tight deadlines. Having knowledge of the local area, the available talent within it, and a leaving-no-stone-unturned mentality, it means the Dunfermline team can fulfil quick turnarounds utilising local job boards and maximising their local knowledge.

Attention to Hiring Detail

The Dunfermline team don’t just go through the motions when it comes to hiring. They work with clients and candidates alike to make sure they both maximise their chances of successful hires and being selected respectively. This includes working with the client on tailor-made job descriptions to attract the right candidates, and coaching candidates on CV writing and interview etiquette. This attention to detail, even the small things which often get overlooked, saves a tremendous amount of time and speeds up the hiring process, while also reinforcing a positive candidate experience.  

Knowledge and Experience

With recruitment needs still firmly based around the shipyards and onshore/offshore fabrication, knowledge of the sector is key to understanding the requirements of the client and the needs of the candidates. Many of the Dunfermline recruitment staff have decades in the sector, and in the case of Gary Scott, the General Manager, he has an entire career to call upon, working across various roles from the ground up. This experience is invaluable when it comes to understanding the requirements from both parties in the delivery of talent.

What Makes Them Unique

There’s no doubting that working in recruitment isn’t for the faint-hearted. There’s the constant communication from all sides, continually fighting fires, tight deadlines, having to let people down gently, while also delivering good news. So you’ve got to be thick skinned. As Gary Scott remarked on having bad days, “You've got to come in every morning. Bright as a button, hoping the next day is better than the previous day. Or you can fix something and make it better”. Being proactive is what sets this team apart and not sitting around waiting for change to come to them – you’ve got to make it happen yourself and take on the responsibility yourself.

We asked Angela Henderson, Dunfermline’s Senior Recruitment Consultant, who has over 20 yrs experience with Orion and beyond, what is it about recruitment that she loves, her reply was: “That no two days are ever the same!”

Angela continues, “While there are ups and downs, just like any other role, it’s not just about presenting Orion Group as the best recruitment agency out there and upholding that reputation”. She takes her own personal pride and reputation into account also, “For me personally, although I work for Orion Group, it’s my own personal reputation that drives me with clients”.

Angela provides an example of when she had to cancel her own personal holiday, explaining that: “One of the managers from an existing client was leaving, and a new manager was taking their place, so a meeting was set up for introductions during my planned vacation. I cancelled the vacation because I wanted to build on the relationship with the new manager, and luckily, in the past few years, we’ve maintained near exclusivity for their requirements. That’s the driving force. You can’t let people down, especially when they’re used to a high level of service".

To highlight her point, Angela concludes, “They have high expectations because you've built that reputation and that's what drives you forward, it's not letting the client down and not letting your own reputation down at the same time”.

For the Fife team, it’s all about:

• Treating the clients and candidates uniquely
• Making every person they’re in contact with feel special and that they matter to them
• Being solution driven: if there’s an obstacle in the road, they’ll find a way around it
• Learning from past experiences, good and bad

That’s what sets this team apart from typical High Street brands – being honest and upfront throughout the whole process.

Another point that differentiates them from the rest in the area is having the support and backing of a knowledgeable and energetic admin team, who will stop at nothing to ensure candidates get paid on time, chase down client information, bank details, documentation etc. They are the invisible stars that makes sure everything runs smoothly and as promised.

People Really Are Our Business Worldwide

With the hype of AI and automation seemingly replacing the human element in recruitment, it’s good to know that there are still teams of people out there, like those in the Dunfermline office (and across our Orion stable), that still bring the personal touch to all their interactions with candidates and clients alike.

While AI can be applied in moderation and used in certain areas for good, nothing beats speaking to and corresponding with a person who really cares about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and building a relationship of trust with hard work and resilience.

Work with Orion Group

If your a welder, electrician, sheet metal worker, slinger, or have a skilled trade and are looking for roles in Scotland or beyond, then contact Angela or Gary directly.

Discover our recent trade roles here. 

If you're a client looking for skilled trades candidates for you upcoming project, then please contact the Dunfermline team - Contact Orion