Hiring for Work Nobody Has Done Before
Constellation is in the middle of a major digital I&C modernization at Limerick. The project team describes it as the nuclear industry’s first safety related digital I&C control upgrade of this scale. There are other digital upgrades to point to, but not one quite like this.
At the same time, energy companies are figuring out how to support a completely different kind of demand from massive data center projects. Large loads aren’t new, but the size, speed and structure of what’s being proposed today are. Co- located generation and load arrangements are new enough that regulators and grid operators are still working through the rules.
Those are two very different examples, but they create a similar hiring problem. You need people to do work that very few people have done in exactly the same way before, yet the first instinct is still usually to write a job description asking for someone who’s already done it.
We’re going to see more of this. Nuclear restarts. Advanced reactor deployments. Major digital upgrades. Huge new power loads tied to data centers. When the work itself is new, requiring someone to have done the exact job before can shrink the candidate pool pretty quickly.
How the impossible requirement gets written
Nobody sits down intending to write a job description that can’t be filled. Usually the team starts with the last similar project, which is a perfectly reasonable place to begin. The problem is that on new types of projects, the last project may not actually be that similar.
Then the requirements start adding up. Engineering has something it considers essential. Operations adds another requirement. Licensing needs something else. Project controls has its own concerns. Every one of those requests may make sense on its own, but put them all together and you can end up describing a person who doesn’t exist.
There’s also a natural desire for proof, especially in nuclear and other regulated environments. If the consequences of getting something wrong are high, someone who’s “done it before” feels safer. But eventually you can end up screening for experience the market simply hasn’t had time to create.
We’ve seen searches where an organization starts out describing the person it thinks it needs, talks with several candidates, and realizes the right background actually sits somewhere else in the industry. That’s not always a talent shortage. Sometimes it’s a scoping problem, and that’s something you can fix much earlier.
What the open seat costs while you wait
The project clock doesn’t stop while the recruiting team searches. Specialized engineering roles can already take months to fill, so if the requirements are unrealistic for the first six or eight weeks of a search, you’ve just added that time to the process.
Usually something has to give. The work gets pushed onto people who already have full plates, and senior engineers start covering part of the vacancy while still handling their own work. Or the schedule gets tight enough that the team makes a compromise anyway, except now they’re making it under pressure.
There’s a third version too. The search goes on, the team starts getting a better feel for what the market can actually provide, and some of the original requirements become more flexible. That kind of recalibration is normal. The problem is waiting six or eight weeks to have a conversation you could’ve had at the beginning: which requirements are truly essential, and which ones are preferences?
Two different kinds of experience
This is the distinction I think a lot of job descriptions miss. There’s domain experience. That’s knowledge of the plant, technology, regulatory environment, system or specific type of work. For some positions, that’s absolutely nonnegotiable. Nobody’s suggesting you get creative with the qualifications for a licensed operator.
Then there’s experience working without an established playbook. Can this person work through requirements when there isn’t a previous project to copy? Can they deal with a design that’s still changing? Can they work with regulators and stakeholders when some of the process is still being figured out? Can they document why decisions were made so the next group isn’t starting over five years from now?
That experience doesn’t necessarily have to come from the exact same project. The Limerick project is a good example. When its project leaders were asked what advice they’d give other utilities, they talked about writing thorough requirements up front, getting the regulator involved early and using the pre-submittal meeting process. That’s not really advice about knowing one specific vendor’s equipment. It’s advice about how to operate when you’re doing something new. That kind of experience deserves more weight than it usually gets.
What to look for instead
If direct experience doesn’t really exist, I’d want to understand five things about a candidate.
- Have they done something without a template? Ask about a project where the team couldn’t just copy what had been done before.
- How do they handle changes? New work changes. Ask what happened when a design or requirement moved late and they already had work completed.
- Do they document their thinking? On a new project, somebody else is eventually going to inherit those decisions. You want people who leave behind the reasoning, not just the final answer.
- How do they handle uncertainty with regulators and stakeholders? The specific agency matters, but so does the way someone works when the path isn’t completely defined.
- Can they teach? On new work, everybody around them is learning too. At Limerick, operators went through six full training cycles on the digital simulator while the design continued to mature.
From there, I’d take the job requirements and sort them into three groups: what absolutely has to be true on day one, what a strong person can realistically learn in the first 90 days, and what’s on the list mostly because the last project required it.
Where to draw the line
None of this means standards should come down. If you hire someone who hasn’t worked in the exact environment before, you need the structure around them to make that work. Good onboarding matters, and so does having experienced people close enough to the work to spot problems early.
That becomes even more important on new projects because there isn’t always a clean benchmark for what normal progress should look like. The answer isn’t to make the requirements list longer. It’s to be very clear about which experience actually protects the project and which experience is simply familiar.
The reality of this situation
There’s enough happening in nuclear right now that this isn’t a hypothetical workforce issue anymore. Restart projects are underway. Advanced reactor projects are moving through licensing and construction. Utilities are planning uprates. Major modernization projects like Limerick are moving toward installation.
That means more organizations are going to need people for projects that don’t have a perfect precedent. If the hiring strategy is always to find somebody who’s already done the exact thing you’re about to do, you’re going to spend a lot of time looking.
The better question may be whether they’ve shown they can succeed when nobody’s done it quite this way before.
Looking for a partner to help you design your workforce strategy? Learn more about AEG’s nuclear staffing and energy & utilities staffing capabilities.
Frequently Asked Questions about Hiring for First-of-its-kind Nuclear Roles
How do you hire for first of a kind nuclear roles?
Separate the experience that truly has to be there on day one from what can be learned on the project. Look for candidates with the right technical foundation who have also successfully worked through new or changing requirements before.
Which adjacent industries are good sources for nuclear talent?
The best adjacent industries depend on the role, but power generation, aerospace, defense, heavy industrial and other highly regulated engineering environments can provide transferable experience. The key is identifying which technical skills and requirements carry over to nuclear work.
How do you recruit for first of a kind projects when experienced nuclear leaders are retiring?
Don’t rely only on candidates who’ve already done the exact job. Pair experienced nuclear knowledge with people who have relevant technical backgrounds, and build knowledge transfer into the team before experienced leaders leave.
What nuclear quality assurance requirements apply to first of a kind projects?
First of a kind projects don’t get a different QA standard simply because the technology is new. Activities affecting safety related equipment must meet applicable NRC quality assurance requirements, including 10 CFR Part 50 Appendix B, with NQA 1 commonly used as an accepted framework for design and construction QA programs.