If you are struggling to find the right talent from traditional routes, it might be time to look inwards at the steps you can take to make your company a more attractive prospect for engineers at every stage of their career.
Read on to learn ten strategies that will help you to find and recruit the best engineers to help drive your business forward.
Have a presence at campus recruitment fairs
If you want to attract graduate talent, don’t wait until they have graduated. By engaging with students while they are still at university, you’ll have the pick of the most talented engineers when the time comes for them to leave the confines of the classroom. You could use this opportunity to create internship opportunities and register students’ interested in working for your company when they graduate.
Create a graduate programme
Graduates will be more attracted to your company if they know they can expect training and career development from their first day. Transitioning from the world of studying to working can be jarring for some, but a graduate scheme will help the most talented students to make this switch with ease. A formal graduate scheme will also help you to train engineers of the future to have the skills you need.
Focus on career development
It isn’t only graduates that should have career development opportunities to look forward to. Every member of staff should be able to see their career development laid out in front of them when they start working with you. By offering ongoing training and a clear career development plan, you’ll have a better chance of attracting the best talent, no matter what stage in their career they are.
Address the gender balance
Women are underrepresented in the engineering sector, so the simplest way to make sure you can meet your staffing requirements across the next decade is to prioritise hiring more women. While the number of women studying engineering is increasing, the same numbers aren’t seen across engineering roles. Making the workplace more accessible and attractive to women is a great way to hire incredible talent.
Work with a specialist recruiter
A specialist engineering recruiter like Nolan Recruitment will help you to navigate the sector and identify top talent. Some of the best workers might not be actively looking for roles, but with a specialist recruitment consultancy, you’ll have access to their extensive contacts. A specialist recruitment company will also be able to make sure your job adverts are working as hard as they could, and ensure they are seen in all the right places.
Offer perks your staff actually want
Many companies offer perks without really thinking about what is useful to their staff. A free gym membership might not be as tempting as the option to work from home or flexible hours. Speak to your staff about what would make their lives easier and then build your staff perks around this feedback. You never know what you might uncover when you ask your staff for feedback.
Create a structured interview process
You’ll have better success finding the right candidates if you have a rigorous and structured interview process. Remember that the best candidates don’t stick around for long, so if you leave people waiting between interview stages, don’t be surprised if they find another opportunity. By creating a strict structure and then sticking to it, you’ll be far more likely to be able to find the most skilled engineers.
Focus on creating meaningful job descriptions
It’s a common misconception that creating a broad job description will help to cast a wider net, but this doesn’t always work out. Instead, focus on creating specific job descriptions with a well-defined candidate profile in mind to help attract the best talent. If a job description is too broad, you run the risk of individuals assuming they are over or under-qualified for the role.
Your job descriptions also need to sell your company, as this is the best way to let candidates know that you are interested in their development. Without this essential step, the recruitment process stops being a two-way conversation.
Define your company culture
If you don’t know why candidates should want to work for you, it’s not fair to ask them to figure this out for themselves. When you define your company culture and get everyone in the company on board with this vision, it becomes far easier to attract and retain the talent that will also be the right culture fit for your company.
Culture fit is important as it will help to improve staff retention rates. When individuals feel like they belong with a company, they are far more likely to stick around.
Ask for recommendations
Your own staff might have excellent leads on talented engineers that are looking for their next role. By offering an incentive for referrals, your existing staff could quickly become your biggest recruitment tool. They might have contacts from university, previous roles or social circles who are not actively looking for a new role but are willing to have a conversation if the opportunity is right for them. These are the individuals that offer the best promise as they are often snapped up without ever needing to apply directly for roles.
Conclusion
Hiring the best engineering talent is about more than just getting your adverts seen in all the right places. In order to attract and retain the best talent, you need to be willing to look inwards at what makes your company great to work for.
By defining your company culture, creating a standardised recruitment process and making sure you know exactly what you are looking for in a candidate, you’ll be more likely to find individuals that align with your goals and expectations.