Rip Van Winkle Takes a Shine to the Semiconductor Industry

If Rip van Winkle were a businessperson who woke up in late 2024 or early 2025 from a deep sleep of just 10 years, he would find that the world has changed, as undoubtedly it would in any 10-year period.

What he might discover in the new world:

• One of the FANG quarter or FAANG quintet is no longer the most valuable company in the world; it is NVIDIA
• The innovations people are talking about are AI and the gig economy and not social media or ecommerce
• The common factor in most technological advancements is no longer the internet; it is semiconductors

Not one to be left behind, our friend Rip, after his morning cup of tea, would soon start working out a plan to get a piece of the action in the growing industry.

Understanding semiconductors

Though he might scratch his head for a minute, not having encountered the term before he went to sleep, as an industrious person, he would soon get to work to understand the altered balance of power.

He would soon realize that semiconductors have acquired the status of a basic building block of the new world. They power almost everything that is used and valued by human beings, such as medical imaging equipment, autonomous vehicles, renewable energy, generative AI and gaming.

Digging deeper, he would understand that semiconductors possess properties that enable the creation of complex, miniature circuits on chips and permit their conductivity to be controlled, making them suitable for a vast array of advanced electronic applications.

Industry of many parts

Not one to settle for anything less than the best, our friend Rip would likely face a challenge when he sets out to look for the best company in the semicon industry. He would find that the industry is not a uniform whole but a composite of several sub-industries.

He would perhaps settle for the common classification:

Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs)

In-house manufacturing and designing of chips, such as Intel Corporation.

Fabless Companies

Specialise in design but outsource manufacturing to foundries, such as AMD.

Foundries

Focus on the manufacture of chips, such as TSMC. Their clients could be fabless or IDM companies.

Equipment Manufacturers

Semiconductors are manufactured and the equipment is supplied by companies in this category, such as ASML.

Hiring for key roles

While mulling over the various parts of the industry and which one he would like to start with, Rip would, very early, identify the criticality of skilled resources as a prerequisite for success and would, hence, also start planning for hiring the best people. That, he realized, was one thing that had not changed in the ten years he was asleep: the need for hiring the best people for a job, and the need for creating a workplace where the best wanted to come and work. If anything, the war for talent in semiconductors would be more intensive and bloodier than had even been witnessed in business.

Some people he spoke to classified roles as entry-level, mid-level and senior-level.

He was interested in senior-level hiring to set the ball rolling. After more research, he identified the key roles and skills that he believed the industry would revolve around:

Design

Circuitry layout and design on chips is of vital importance. This process is aided by expertise in the usage of design software and being able to ideate and provide out-of-the-box solutions.

Engineering

Since it is a manufactured piece of equipment, engineering skills of various types, such as electrical and electronic, are required at various stages.

Research and Development (R&D)

In a cutting-edge industry, continuous R&D will be an ongoing requirement to stay ahead of the curve.

Recruitment plan

Rip reached out to Ushankk, his hiring partners from ten years back, who had helped him source leadership talent. To his surprise, much like he had done in the last few days, Ushankk had, in the intervening period, developed expertise in leadership hiring for the semiconductor industry.

The plan developed between Ushankk and Rip included not merely a hiring strategy, but also a holistic process for retention and management of executive talent in the company.

Key parts:

• Academic partnerships that would create a pipeline for talent and communicate semiconductor industry expectations from academia on curricula
• Surveys and feedback avenues to enable employees to express themselves
• Periodic evaluation of skills leading to skill-based retraining and upskilling programmes
• An executive search programme that would be global in reach
• Regular compensation benchmarking and adjustments as called for
• Leveraging the best technology tools, such as profiling and success-prediction tools, for meeting talent needs

Conclusion

Rip is wide awake now and excited about his foray into the semiconductor industry.

Watch this space for news on Rip making not ripples, but waves.