The Recruiting Game

Every industry I touch right now is short on people. Manufacturing, energy, aerospace, healthcare—pick one. For years, boardrooms were told AI would close the gap: automate routine tasks, stretch a shrinking workforce, and buy time. It hasn't worked out that way. Demand for skilled labor still outruns supply across the economy, and NDT is no exception.

In some ways, our industry is even more exposed. Our codes and standards weren't built to move at software speed. A phased array procedure that could plausibly be assisted by machine learning today still has to pass through a standards-development cycle designed for a slower, more analog era. That lag is buying us time we should spend strengthening the workforce pipeline, not repeating the same diagnosis.

The truth is, the workforce conversation in NDT has become background noise. Articles on the graying workforce, warnings about brain drain, panels on the future of NDT talent—Materials Evaluation has covered it. ASNT sections have discussed it for years. What's missing isn't awareness. It's an overarching strategy backed by real execution.

We nod, agree it is a crisis, and go back to our budgets. I've been guilty of that too. So let me say it plainly: ASNT has lagged. We've talked about workforce longer than almost any technical society I know, with less to show for it. That must change and I believe it can, but only if we're honest about what got us here.

The greatest threat to NDT jobs is not automation. It is disappearance.

Much of the current conversation is fixated on AI replacing technicians, but that's not what concerns me most. What concerns me is end users engineering critical inspection labor out of their specifications altogether—reducing inspection frequency, narrowing scope, substituting a lower-tier method, or relying on sensors without qualified interpretation because they can't find or afford the Level II or III personnel to do the work properly.

That is not a productivity gain. It's a permanent loss. Once an owner-operator decides a weld no longer requires a qualified human eye, getting that requirement back into a specification becomes a multiyear fight, if it happens at all. We aren't competing with AI for these jobs. We're competing with the disappearance of the job itself.

Part of the reason is that we've allowed ourselves to become the caboose: material selection happens, design decisions happen, processes lock in, and NDT shows up at the end to check a box. That's dangerous—a checkbox is negotiable in a way an engineering input is not, and when budgets tighten, downstream verification is easier to cut than design integrity built in from the start.

The fix is to move our people upstream—into material selection, design conversations, inspectability planning, method selection, and probability-of-detection thinking before a production decision is cemented. A discipline that helps shape the material and the design can't be quietly deleted from a specification. One that only signs off at the end can.

We also need to get honest about how this industry recruits. Too often, we hunt for people with the “right” background: engineering degrees, prior inspection experience, a narrow technical pedigree. But NDT doesn't fundamentally require that. It requires curiosity, patience, sharp observation, sound judgment, and above all, integrity: telling the truth about something other people may not want to hear.

The formal educational barrier to entry is relatively low. The ethical bar is not. A technician who signs a report makes a judgment that protects lives, often under schedule, cost, or customer pressure. We cannot teach integrity after the fact.

Once someone enters this field, the opportunity is extraordinary. NDT offers one of the strongest career ladders. Entry-level technicians can move into solid middle-class wages within a year of certification, without a four-year degree or college debt. From there, the path can lead to Level III, engineering support, quality leadership, operations management, even company ownership. Dollar for dollar and year for year, few skilled trades offer a comparable ladder.

If we are serious about fixing the pipeline, we need a two-track strategy. First, a major awareness campaign around NDT itself—what it is, why it matters, and what kind of careers it makes possible. Too many capable people have never heard of this profession, let alone its public-safety importance or earning potential. ASNT and the ASNT Foundation should lead a visible, sustained effort reaching students, parents, educators, policymakers, and the broader workforce.

Second, we should aggressively convert and expand the skilled trades already closest to this work—welders, machinists, field electricians, quality technicians, and military veterans with sensor, radar, and disciplined technical experience—people who already trust hands-on careers and often need only one credible conversation to see a future in NDT. Awareness opens the top of the funnel; conversion accelerates near-term enrollment. We need both, working together, not a narrow focus on either alone.

This can't be only a top-down effort, or a bottom-up one either. ASNT needs to set strategy, invest in the pipeline, and run sustained advocacy; each of us needs to decide that bringing in the next person is part of the job. A society can build the framework; only individuals can make the ask. Remove either one and the whole effort weakens.

That's the real call to action, and at its core, it's a one-on-one game. Conferences, campaigns, and polished messaging all matter, but none will solve this alone. Every ASNT member and Foundation supporter who has built a career in NDT owes the field a name—one person to personally encourage, sponsor, mentor, and help through certification and entry.

ASNT and the Foundation must carry that campaign at scale, too, with advocacy efforts in Washington, state capitols, India, and other growth markets where industrial expansion is accelerating demand for inspection talent.

We have lagged. We know this industry better than anyone else at the table. The responsibility is ours—it's ASNT, and it's you. The time to lead this fight is now, and we need to do it together.