3D printing, the future El Dorado of the job market?

In 2014, 3Dnatives France published a study on recruitment in the 3D printing industry with the goal of showing how technology has led to an increased demand for diverse profiles to join the industry. Recently the Orientation Council, (a body that is attached to the Institute for European Social Protection (Ipse), released a report stating that 50% of existing jobs were likely to change or even disappear due to advances being made in artificial intelligence, robotics and 3D printing. While this may seem discouraging, we wanted to see how true this was by examining how additive manufacturing can potentially help you and your future career.

In order to better understand this sector, we first needed to understand the opportunities that are currently being offered and what qualifications people are looking for during the hiring process. To do this, we decided to meet with three professionals who have a long history in this sector; who could show us what direction 3D printing is going in. Our key goal during our meetings was to find out if this sector will replace or destroy many of the job sectors that we see today in the long term.

Our three interviewees were George Fisher-Wilson, the Communications Manager at 3DHubs (a famous platform that links owners of 3D printers to potential users), Marine Coré-Baillais, the Marketing Director of Sculpteo (a French on demand 3D printing service) and Gesa Schneider, the EMEA Channel Manager at BigRep (a German manufacturer of large scale 3D printers).