Happy Anniversary Ental!
Our first success at Ental came when we helped a Semiconductor client find an exceptional Engineering Manager, someone who hadn't updated his resume in years and had a dormant LinkedIn account. Twenty years at one of the best multinational companies in the world, so dedicated to his craft that he simply never sought to explore elsewhere. In our industry, we call them passive candidates. Finding someone like that is only possible through a referral.
If we went back in the day, hiring someone was a lot simpler. Newspaper ads, walk-in resumes, a handful of applications and a few hires. When LinkedIn came along, it became the first truly disruptive technology to our industry. It brought way more opportunities to people, but it also made the market more saturated. As a second disrupter, AI is going to amplify that. People have figured out how to apply to 1,000 jobs in a day. The industry has never been noisier, and separating signal from noise has never mattered more.
AI-generated CVs are becoming more prominent too, not to mention the other noise on LinkedIn. Referrals, I believe, go a long way in solving this. That became the foundation of Ental, a referral-led recruitment business built for engineering and manufacturing companies. The sectors we chose are ones I see great opportunity in: Semiconductor, Aerospace, Industrial and Energy, anchored in AI infrastructure and the technologies shaping humanity's future. Our consultants are industry and client-led. We go deep on each account rather than spread thin across many. In the last 30 days alone, we've met our 20 clients in Malaysia and Singapore in person. Whilst job redundancies become a growing concern (In our case, clients described a lot about the future of Dark Manufacturing), excitement in those rooms about where things are heading is real.
The engineering recruitment market is on the rise, which is going to draw a lot more recruiters into this space (I see this happening in Malaysia especially). My take is that there's more than enough for everyone over the next 3 years, but the bar will rise. Recruiters who don't build around genuine expertise will find it increasingly hard. The best recruiters I know have four things in common. I call it RISE: Relationships, Integrity, Speed and Expertise. It guides how I hire, build the team, and make decisions at Ental. The early results speak for themselves. Our consultants are billing more revenue in the first half of 2026 than they did across their previous financial year. Having walked this path as a recruitment consultant back in 2016, I find joy helping the team reach their personal bests and my hope is to build the team that will surpass my personal best too.
In my 10 years recruiting for engineering, things have never been this exciting, and I am genuinely optimistic about where this is heading. The industry calls it a super cycle - a rare convergence of demand across sectors that doesn't come around often. We're seeing strong repeat perm business through contingent and retained deals. Watching consultants who joined Ental grow so quickly in such a short time is the clearest early sign that, as a founder, my optimism is not delusional.
The vision is to build the largest engineering talent company in Asia. But right now, there's something I genuinely value about being small again (what a time it is to be at our size). Starting fresh let me amplify what worked and leave behind what didn't. My goal heading to this year is to further strengthen both our client relationships and our referral approach. If you're an experienced engineering recruiter looking to do the best work of your career, would love to connect.
#TeamEntal #EngineeringRecruitment #RISEwithEntal
