The recruitment team at Lockheed Martin will be “at the real sharp end” of discussions around the US defence giant’s planned expansion of its UK operations, the function’s head Jonathan Young (right) tells Recruiter.

Young, who is head of international workforce strategy, analytics and talent acquisition, will be speaking at Recruiter’s Smart Resourcing Conference 2013, the ‘must attend’ event for in-house recruitment professionals on topics including workforce planning, building an international staffing unit and how analytics can help a staffing function.

Currently, 17% of Lockheed’s business is outside of the US, but it is looking to significantly up this to somewhere between 20% and 25%. “That’s a significant jump; you’re talking billions of dollars in increased sales,” Young notes.

He describes to Recruiter: “We’re working hard to ensure we’re at the vanguard, at the real sharp end of what’s being discussed around expansion, growth, mergers and acquisitions because we have a part to play in this. 

“What they [the business] need is the intelligence to make some shrewd decisions about where they locate their businesses, where those skillsets are and what they will cost and how quickly they can be hired, bringing all those discussions to make sure that expansion is done at the right time rather than [just saying] ‘we’ve decided to open an office in this country’.”

Young says that one area where his function will have influence is in discussing the requirements for subcontracting and maintaining its supply chain. According to a piece in The Daily Telegraph last month, the UK business of Lockheed has around 700 companies in the supply chain.

When the business needs mechanical capability in Qatar, for example, they might decide: “Well actually mechanics might not necessarily be our forte, so we could try to subcontract that to someone else,” rather than recruiting them. With high security clearance and sensitive projects at Lockheed, Young adds: “But then there are also the security implications as well [of outsourcing].”

• We look forward to you joining us at Smart Resourcing, which includes a keynote speech from John Vlastelica, a former recruiting director with Amazon and Expedia, as well as RAF Group Captain for recruiting Ian Tolfts; Paul Modley, the man who led the recruitment effort for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; and outsourcing firm Capita’s director of internal resourcing Cath Possamai. Visit the Smart Resourcing 2013 website.