Many recruiters have faced difficulties connecting with the industry’s top talent and in this article, we share tips and strategies to ensure attracting the best engineers.
The 5 Best Practices for Attracting Professional Engineers
Employers must recognize that quality engineers want to work for a quality company. Whether they have experience, a degree, or other supplementary certificates, those that know a lot expect a lot. Employers can prove they have value by building their engineering pipeline.
Part 1: Create an Engineer-Friendly Brand
Marketing and hiring go hand-in-hand. Attracting quality talent starts and ends with your brand because it tells a story about who you want to work with. Your brand must focus on instilling your values, passions, and work specialties. Otherwise, you’ll hire the wrong people.
Brands often use content marketing on their social media or website to get their vision across to the public. For example, Etsy runs the Code as Craft blog, which discusses topics like their philosophy on the app release process and their allyship to women and non-binary people.
Both posts paint a picture for who they support: unappreciated creatives from marginalized groups.
Part 2: Assess Applicants
Engineers are technical problem solvers, so relying solely on algorithmic keywords and academic achievements to find your candidates won’t do you or your company any good.
It’s far more effective for you to test engineers on skills and technologies they’ll actually use in their day-to-day roles. While creating an interviewing project will take hours of effort, you’ll save your company time and money marketing, screening, interviewing, training, and onboarding.
At the same time, you can’t overlook their experience within the field. The applicant assessment process, whether for an engineer, CPA, or customer service agent, should include candidates with the necessary certifications, degrees, and internships.
Thus, you should look at whether the applicant has taken PE prep courses to prove their competency in their chosen engineering discipline.
Part 3: Engage and Source Engineers
In sales, there’s a mantra: ABC (Always Be Closing). Businesses who want to attract engineers should instead follow another, more relevant mantra: NSR (Never Stop Recruiting).
That doesn’t mean you have to hire new engineers every week, month, or year, but it does mean you have to engage with them continuously. Use channels like hiring platforms, referrals, outbound prospecting, and inbound marketing to prove that your company is worth a look.
Part 4: Spend Time With Prospective Employees
Your co-workers, bosses, and managers quickly become your family. Your company culture will inevitably be affected by the type of people you hire, so you need to take it seriously.
Employees who connect with a strong company culture are more likely to be motivated, proactive, and positive. Plus, your company's turnover rate will be lower, improving your bottom line significantly. But, you can’t just read a candidate's resume to determine culture fit.
Instead, develop a screening stage that prioritizes relationship building. Ask them questions about their personality and what drives them before advancing to the interview stage.
Part 5: Close and Train Immediately
Assuming your engineer of choice would make a great fit for your team, you need to send out an offer as soon as possible. Your prospective engineers are applying for other jobs, so they’re likely receiving multiple offers at a time. For this reason, your biggest asset will be your speed.
The key to closing is being direct, responsive, and passionate. Your company must state that they want their engineer and they want them now. However, keep in mind that your prospects could deny your offer for employment, but it’s important not to take it personally.
You may have the opportunity to hire this engineer in the future, and you don’t want to injure the relationship.