You don’t need to be told how challenging it is to land top engineering talent in today’s competitive market. What you do need is a solid plan for sourcing, interviewing and hiring for your key roles.
Here are some tips as you find, engage and land the most desirable engineering hires:
Highlight your brand.
Top candidates are evaluating your company the same way you’re assessing them. Showcasing your employer brand is an excellent way to help ensure the right match, right from the start. By getting to know your story and your brand, job seekers can start to tell early on whether they would be a good match for your team, and vice versa.
Show them the bigger picture.
An effective tactic for attracting engineers – critical thinkers and innovators by nature – is to sell them on the exciting projects they’d be working on at your company. Your branding story paints part of this picture, and well-crafted job descriptions help complete it. Clearly outline the duties, tasks and technical details of the role and show them the big problems they could help solve. Also, highlight any other exceptional technologists they’d be working with if hired.
Standardize your interview process.
Your interview process should be standard across all candidates and should incorporate both technical and behavioral questions. You want to know who a prospective hire is, beyond just their hard skills. A good way to do this is to ask them about a specific situation or problem they’ve experienced and have them talk it through to a successful outcome. The more details you can glean, the more you’ll learn. It helps greatly to include other engineers – potential future peers and direct reports, as well as supervisors – on your interview team, for multiple perspectives.
Start an employee referral program.
If you don’t already have one, an employee referral program is a great way to enlist your best current employees to help you recruit like minds. Much of the hiring done today is via social networks, both in person and online. Offer bonuses or perks to team members who make successful referrals. It’s a great way to not only fill current vacancies, but build a pool of diverse candidates for the future.
Which leads to …
Deepen your talent pool.
Always be sourcing new engineering talent. Along with your employee referral program, experiment with various other candidate sources – programmatic advertising, LinkedIn and other social media, for instance – and determine which are most effective.
Recruiting top talent is an ongoing, multi-step process – and not one where you can afford to cut corners or risk a bad hire. To zero in on the candidates you need to grow your business and boost your ROI, contact Venteon today. Our technical recruiters focus exclusively on matching Midwest employers with qualified technical engineering professionals for contract, contract-to-hire and direct-hire roles.