Re: Question: What is the hardest to find professional in our market?

I work in broadcast and by far the most difficult person to find is a good engineer. We are fortunate to have access to a top notch engineer that keeps our facility finely tuned. His work load is such that he constantly needs to hire and train young people to keep up with demand. The problem is that it's difficult to find young people interested in the engineering aspect of the industry.

All the kids have easy access to cheap cameras, NLE's and graphics applications. Many of them had some fun cranking out a few skate videos. So they've declared themselves "Director's" and they are ready to take on the world. On the other side of the coin you'll find the rare individual that enjoys the challenges of solving technical problems. I suppose hunting down an unterminated source is boring work when compared to making shiny glowy things. But when the room is filled with a dozen 'artists' that have no clue on how to fix the problem you can bet your last dollar that the highest paid person in the room is the guy with the boring job of solving the problem.

Granted there are far fewer job listings for entry level engineers versus editors/motion designers. But when there's an opening for an engineer the competition for the job is a handful of people compared to a thousand wanna be "Directors" competing for a creative position.

As others have said here the most important thing is doing the one thing that you enjoy doing.