You have a critical opening for a Controls Engineer. You do what every other hiring manager in 2025 does. You pay for a LinkedIn Recruiter seat, you type "PLC Programmer" into the search bar, and you send fifty InMails.

Then you wait.

And wait.

A week goes by. You get three responses. Two are from engineers in different countries who need visa sponsorship you cannot provide. The third is from a junior engineer who wants a senior-level salary.

You are frustrated. You know the talent is out there. You see their work every time you walk onto a competitor’s factory floor. You see the flawless motion control on the new packaging line at the trade show. Who built that? And why aren't they replying to your messages?

Welcome to the reality of recruiting in industrial automation.

The uncomfortable truth is that the best engineers—the top 10% who can truly architect a complex system from scratch—are not hanging out on LinkedIn. They are not polishing their resumes on Indeed. They are happily employed, deeply engrossed in technical challenges, and completely invisible to standard recruiting tools.

They are what we call "Dark Talent."

If you want to hire them, you have to stop acting like a traditional recruiter and start acting like a private investigator. You have to go where they live digitally and physically.

This guide will show you the hidden corners of the internet and the real-world watering holes where the true experts in PLCs, robotics, and SCADA congregate.

The Psychology of the Automation Engineer

To find them, you have to understand how they think.

Automation engineers are inherently problem-solvers. They value efficiency, technical accuracy, and peer validation. They have a low tolerance for fluff, marketing buzzwords, and generic HR outreach.

When a generic recruiter sends them a message that says, "I have an exciting opportunity at a leading manufacturer!", they delete it. It tells them nothing.

But when they are stuck on a complex servo tuning issue at 3 AM, they do not go to LinkedIn for help. They go to specialized communities where they know other experts are awake and facing the same problems.

These communities are built on a gift economy. You gain status not by your job title, but by the quality of the technical solutions you provide to others.

If you want to recruit from these spaces, you must respect the culture. You cannot kick down the door and start posting job ads. You have to observe, understand, and engage authentically.

Here are the three primary "hideouts" for top-tier automation talent.

Hideout #1: The Digital Speakeasies (Niche Forums)

There are corners of the internet that look like they haven't been updated since 2005. They are text-heavy, clunky, and poorly designed.

And they are absolute gold mines for talent.

These forums are where the real work happens. It is where an engineer working on an oil rig in the North Sea asks a question about a legacy Siemens S7-300 PLC and gets an answer ten minutes later from a retired expert in Germany.

The Big One: PLCTalk.net

If you are recruiting controls engineers and you do not have an account on PLCTalk, you are flying blind. This is the oldest and most respected forum on the internet for industrial controls.

It is purely technical. There is no career advice section. There are no cat memes. It is just thousands of threads about Modbus registers, VFD parameters, and ladder logic syntax.

How to Recruit Here (Without Getting Banned): Do not post jobs. You will be banned by the moderators instantly.

Instead, use it as a research tool.

• Identify the Experts: Look for the users with thousands of posts who are answering the hardest questions. Their usernames are usually pseudonyms, but you can often figure out who they are. Look at their signature line. Sometimes they link to their own small consulting firm website.
• Understand the Pain Points: Read the threads to understand what technologies are causing the most headaches right now. If everyone is complaining about integrating a specific new camera system, and you need someone to do that, you know exactly what to look for in a resume.

The Modern Hub: Reddit (r/PLC)

Reddit has a reputation for being chaotic, but the r/PLC subreddit is a surprisingly professional and highly active community of over 60,000 members.

Unlike PLCTalk, which skews older, r/PLC has a good mix of mid-level engineers and senior veterans. They discuss technical issues, but they also discuss career paths, salary transparency, and industry trends.

How to Recruit Here: Reddit is tricky. The community is notoriously hostile to overt marketing.

• The "Who is Hiring" Thread: Most technical subreddits have a monthly pinned thread for job postings. This is the only safe place to post your role. Make it detailed. List the salary range. Engineers on Reddit hate vague salary descriptions.
• The Direct Message (DM) Strategy: Find users who are posting intelligent comments about the specific hardware you use. Send them a private message. Be incredibly specific: "Hey, I saw your comment on the thread about Beckhoff TwinCAT networking. You clearly know your stuff. My company is struggling with a similar architecture right now. Would you be open to a quick chat?" This approach respects their expertise.

The Specialists: Vendor Forums

If you are a 100% Rockwell shop, or a 100% Ignition shop, go to the source.

• Rockwell Automation Tech Support Forum: This is where the die-hard Allen Bradley users hang out.
• Inductive Automation Forum (Ignition): The Ignition community is passionate and highly engaged. Their forum is full of people sharing scripts and project ideas.

Engineers active on these vendor-specific forums are usually "super-users." They aren't just doing the bare minimum; they are trying to push the software to its limits. That is the kind of person you want to hire.

Hideout #2: The Physical Gathering Grounds (Trade Shows)

Despite being a digital industry, automation is still a "handshake business." The best engineers still go to trade shows. They go to kick the tires on the new robots, to argue with vendor sales reps about specs, and to drink beer with their old colleagues.

However, if you go to a trade show and just stand in your booth waiting for candidates to walk up to you, you will fail. The best engineers are not walking the floor looking for a job. They are walking the floor looking for solutions.

You need a strategy.

The Big Shows: Automate and Pack Expo

These are the massive, chaotic events where everyone is fighting for attention.

The Strategy: Don't focus on the show floor during the day. Focus on the after-hours events.

• The Vendor Parties: The big hardware vendors (Fanuc, Rockwell, Siemens) throw massive parties in the evenings. This is where the engineers relax. If you are a customer of those vendors, get invitations to their parties. Work the room. Don't pitch jobs; pitch technical problems. Ask people what they are working on.
• The Hotel Bars: Find out which hotel is the "official" conference hotel. The bar in the lobby from 5 PM to 7 PM is the best recruiting ground in the city. You will hear engineers complaining about their current projects, their bosses, and their travel schedules. Listen for the pain points, and then offer a solution.

The Niche Conferences: The Real Gold

The massive shows are good for networking, but the smaller, highly technical conferences are better for finding specialists.

• CSIA (Control System Integrators Association) Executive Conference: This is where the owners and top talent of System Integration firms gather. If you want to poach talent from an SI, this is where you find them.
• Ignition Community Conference (ICC): If you need SCADA/MES talent, this is the Mecca. It is practically a religious experience for Ignition users. The energy is high, and everyone is there to learn. It is the perfect place to meet passionate developers.

Hideout #3: The "Whisper Network" (Referrals)

The industrial automation world is incredibly small. Everyone knows everyone, or they are at least one degree of separation away.

There is a "Whisper Network" of elite engineers who pass job opportunities around privately before they ever hit a job board.

• "Hey, I heard Ford is building a new battery plant and they need a controls lead. Bob is the hiring manager. You should give him a call."

That conversation happens via text message, not via LinkedIn.

To tap into this network, you have to build trust over years. You have to become a known entity in the ecosystem.

How to Build Your Own Network:

1. Treat Your Vendors Like Recruiters: Your local Rockwell or Siemens distributor sales rep knows every engineer in your territory. They know who is unhappy. They know whose project just got cancelled. Take your distributor rep to lunch. Ask them: "Who is the best controls guy you know who is currently miserable?" They will tell you.
2. The "Exit Interview" Gold Mine: When a good engineer leaves your company on good terms, treat them like an alumnus. Stay in touch. Six months later, call them to check in. They will know who at your company is looking to leave, and they will know who at their new company is looking for a change.
3. Pay for Quality Referrals: Your internal employee referral bonus of $500 is insulting for this level of talent. Offer a real bounty. Offer $5,000 for a Senior Controls Engineer referral that sticks for six months. Make your current employees your headhunters.

The Bounty Hunter Approach

Recruiting top automation talent is hard work. It requires you to step outside the comfort zone of automated HR tools and engage in high-touch, personalized outreach.

You have to respect the craft. You have to understand the difference between a PLC and a PAC. You have to know why someone would prefer text-based programming over ladder logic.

When you show up in these niche spaces—the forums, the conferences, the whisper networks—and you speak the language, you stop being a "recruiter." You become an industry peer who happens to have a problem that needs solving.

That is how you get the "Dark Talent" to reply to your message.

Don't have the time to lurk on forums all day?

We do. Our entire business is built on these niche networks. We know who the top posters are on PLCTalk. We know who the superstars are at the Ignition conference. We have spent years building the trust that allows us to tap into the "Whisper Network."

If you are tired of chasing ghosts on LinkedIn, let us introduce you to the talent that is invisible to everyone else.

Contact us today to open a channel to the best engineers in the industry.