Hiring qualified machine vision people

As machine vision continues to become just another production tool, plants are realizing they need people skilled in developing, implementing and maintaining the equipment. But they find it difficult to recruit competent specialists. There seem to be two problems: first, the interviewer and/or hiring manager don’t know how to assess a candidates ‘vision competence’, and second, it’s difficult to attract really skilled applicants.

As you might expect, I have a suggestion for dealing with this.

We need some kind of certification exam for machine vision professionals, perhaps administered by an organization like the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). Community colleges could then develop and run classes to get people certified by delivering the knowledge and skills needed to be a skilled vision systems developer, implementor and maintainer. In turn, independent certification let’s a recruiter see that a job candidate has real expertise, rather than being just a ‘dabbler’.

The other side of the coin is that companies will have to be prepared to pay more for vision skills, but as certification means this expertise is independently verified, the risk of hiring someone who claims more than he can deliver is significantly reduced.

Is this a good idea or what?