Where to find us in person

Why we go, every time

A recruiter who only knows a market through job descriptions knows it badly. The shows are where the market explains itself: which technologies a company is betting on, who has just moved, which stand is twice the size it was last year and which one has quietly gone. Three days on the floor is worth more than three months of reading.

They are also where trust gets built at a pace email cannot manage. Most of the searches we run started as a conversation at a stand, or a coffee that had been in the diary for months, or somebody flagging us down because they had just changed jobs and wanted us to know. We go back to all of them, at PCIM and electronica for the full run of days, and we start fixing half-hour meetings months ahead.

PCIM Europe, Nuremberg

This is our home show. Power electronics is the market we have worked longest, and PCIM is where that market stands still for three days and lets you walk round it. Device makers, module makers, the drives and converter companies, the test and measurement people, and the engineers who design all of it in.

This June we were in Nuremberg for all three days. A field applications engineer we had known for years flagged us down at his new employer’s stand to tell us about the move, and the conversation that followed was the start of our approach to a company we had wanted to work with for some time. A sales director we met on the floor mentioned a possible opening in his EMEA applications team; within days we had a strong candidate in that conversation. A contact we had first met at electronica two years earlier made time to catch up again, and a hiring manager we reconnected with there had two of our people in front of him within weeks. That is what a good PCIM looks like, and it is why the follow-ups run well into the autumn.

The conference alongside the exhibition is where the technical direction of the market gets argued out in public, which is worth a recruiter’s time even if none of the papers are about hiring. Knowing why a design team is moving from one device technology to another is the difference between a shortlist that makes sense to them and one that does not.

PCIM does not come alone, either. SENSOR+TEST fills the halls next door on the same days, so the trip covers two fairs and two audiences, which is the next section.

SENSOR+TEST, Nuremberg

The other half of the Nuremberg trip, and the one we had not been counting. SENSOR+TEST runs in the same halls as PCIM, on the same days, through the same Mitte entrance: sensors, measuring and testing technology, from the instrument makers to the people who calibrate and qualify what everybody else designs.

It belongs on this list because the two halls share an audience. Power electronics is developed against measurement: the test engineer characterising a module, the applications engineer who lives on a bench, the sales engineer selling instrumentation into the same customers we recruit for. Walking both fairs in one visit means meeting the design side and the measurement side of the same companies in an afternoon, which is the sort of thing that only happens at a show.

electronica, Munich

electronica is the big one, and it is on our doorstep. Every second November the whole electronics supply chain arrives in Munich: component makers, distributors, the automotive electronics world, power, RF, test, and the people who buy from all of them. It is too large to walk in a day, which is exactly why it is useful: nobody is there by accident.

We plan it early. By the end of August we are already writing to people to fix half an hour in November, because the people worth half an hour are the people whose half hours go first. We like to be prepared. Several of the relationships that produce our searches began as a coffee at electronica and were picked up again at PCIM the following June, and then at electronica again two years on. A show that recurs is a relationship that recurs.

One example of what that is worth. Somebody mentioned to a CEO we had never met that we were at the show, and he sent a WhatsApp asking whether we were around. A few minutes later we were sitting with him: a power semiconductor company that wanted its first salesperson in the DACH region, building the territory from the ground up with nobody there before them. He had never dealt with us, but he had seen what we post on LinkedIn and had asked about us in the industry, and what came back was good enough to send that message.

We had someone in mind before the briefing was over. We met the candidate, got them interested, and introduced them to the CEO at the show itself. A meeting at the company followed the week after, then an offer, and they took the job. That search, and that person’s career, both turn on one message sent across an exhibition hall.

SEMICON Europa, Munich

SEMICON Europa runs alongside electronica in Munich, and it is the other half of the same trip. Where electronica is about the components, SEMICON is about how they are made: the fabs, the equipment makers, the materials suppliers, and the vacuum, thin-film, plasma and metrology specialists whose work most people never see.

For us it is the show for a market that is small, technical and hard to reach any other way. The engineers who genuinely understand a deposition or etch process are a short list, and a good proportion of that list is in the halls at SEMICON. It is also where the European semiconductor conversation happens in the open, which matters when the searches we run depend on where the next fab investment lands.

Laser World of Photonics, Munich

The largest photonics event we go to, and the one that draws the whole field into Munich every second June: laser sources, optics, fibre, imaging and measurement, and the systems companies that build all of it into something a customer buys. The World of Photonics Congress runs alongside it, which pulls in the research end of the same market, and automatica and World of Quantum share the halls in the same week.

It matters to us for a reason that has nothing to do with size. Photonics hiring runs on a small number of people who move between a small number of employers, and this is the week most of them are in one place. A laser engineer, an optical designer and the sales director who covers both are all reachable in an afternoon here, and reaching them any other way takes months.

Optatec, Frankfurt

The other photonics show, and a deliberately different one: optical technologies, components and systems, every second May in Frankfurt. Lasers, lenses, fibre, optical sensors and the imaging and measurement systems built on them. We have been going since 2018, and the photonics contacts from those early visits are still on our list.

It is a smaller show than the others and better for it. Where Munich is four days of crowds, Frankfurt is the one where conversations run long and it is possible to leave having actually met the people you came to meet. The two years alternate, so between them the photonics market gets covered every spring.

ECOC Exhibition, Málaga

New to this list, and the shortest trip we will ever make to a show. ECOC is Europe’s optical communications exhibition, it moves to a different city each September, and the 2026 edition is at FYCMA in Málaga from the 21st to the 23rd. Ramon lives in the city.

Optical communications sits alongside the photonics market we already recruit in, and the overlap is where the hiring is: high-power and wavelength-flexible laser sources, fibre-coupled modules, transceivers, and the free-space and satellite links being built on top of them. The component makers and the system builders on both sides of that line draw on the same short list of engineers we know from Munich and Frankfurt.

It moves on afterwards, to Milan in October 2027 and the Benelux in 2028, which makes the years it comes near you worth clearing the diary for.

How to find us there

We do not exhibit; we walk. The easiest way to meet is to book a slot before the show. Email, WhatsApp or LinkedIn all reach Ramon directly, and half an hour at a stand or over a coffee is enough to work out whether we can help with what you are hiring, or where you want to be next.

If you would rather not plan, that works too. Every year somebody stops us in an aisle, and every year one of those conversations turns into something. Say hello.

• ECOC Exhibition, Málaga: 21 to 23 September 2026. Ramon is based in the city, so say when you are here.
• electronica and SEMICON Europa, Munich: 10 to 13 November 2026. Meetings are being booked now.
• PCIM Europe and SENSOR+TEST, Nuremberg: next edition 11 to 13 May 2027, both fairs, all three days.
• Laser World of Photonics, Munich: next edition 22 to 25 June 2027.
• Optatec, Frankfurt: next edition 9 to 11 May 2028.
• To book: contact@globalrecruitment.tech, or the Contact button on any page.