TH: What level of staff are companies recruiting (e.g. CEO level, VP level, engineers) and how do you see this demographic evolving?
JF: There aren't really people out there who have experience building a nanotechnology-enabled product, except for maybe materials companies using "passive" nanotechnology. So companies have conceded that they need people that at least have successfully built products based on disruptive technology. Nano-based products definitely fall into that category.
The most abundant demand is for senior engineers with proven experience of building commercially successful, volume manufactured, advanced-technology products - this will always be in demand. Similarly, companies are recruiting candidates that have appropriate product experience in a parallel industry. For example, maybe a candidate has been instrumental in helping Samsung develop and/or manufacture DRAM (dynamic random access memory). The product might not necessarily be based on disruptive technology, but Nantero or ZettaCore may want the candidate because those companies' nonvolatile RAM products are not only competitive, but are likely to be built and integrated into existing technology in a similar manner to the DRAM.
In even greater demand is executive management with the same kind of track record in successful commercial products based on disruptive technology (for example Larry Bock of Nanosys). Because nanotech lies at the intersection of so many different areas of science, the more multidisciplinary the candidate's background, the better. This kind of background and experience will always be in demand.
As you can see, a company's first priority is hiring those staff that are absolutely critical to establishing a foundation for its operation, growth and future success. This demographic will evolve. Eventually, businesses will need the so-called "worker bees" and there will be increased hiring at the more junior levels. Minimum requirements will still be a high bar for most - mainly Master's and PhD degrees. The delay in hiring at this level is because prototype development doesn't require a large team. Since lots of nanotech is transferred out of university and government labs, the core teams with the highly focused expertise are already in place.
How many people do you estimate to be "nano-enabled" - able to view the nanoscale with the interdisciplinary skills that they need to exploit nanoscale phenomena?
Frankly, not that many. However, the number of people will increase, probably exponentially as the integration of nanotech into everyday products builds up steam. Currently, the companies building nano-enabled products have the few luminaries they need (for example Charlie Lieber at Nanosys, Alex Zettl at Nanomix and Phaedon Avouris at IBM). Only a few people need to have the vision to train and influence others. As more staff in each company become nano-enabled and start to build successful products based on nanotechnology, there will be a snowball effect. An interesting side effect of the current nano-hype is that it may actually contribute to getting the right people on track to becoming nano-enabled.