Are you responsible for hiring engineers?
This is a hard job. Engineers are in high demand, and recruiting top talent can be a challenge. Once you receive applications, you need to decide who to hire. As you know, you need to hire the best-possible engineers to take your team to the next level.
To make better hiring decisions, here are five important factors to consider when making a hiring decision.
1. Experience
Experience is an important factor to consider when you’re hiring engineers. If candidates have shown success in similar jobs, they’ll probably be able to replicate that success at your company. They have a proven track record of success. When you have to choose between a candidate with experience and one without, it often makes sense to choose the former. This is especially true if you don’t have the budget or time to train new employees. Of course, experience isn’t everything. It’s not enough to just hire the person who’s most experienced on paper. Make sure to consider experience, but don’t prioritize it over everything else.
2. Potential
When you’re interviewing candidates, you may encounter some people who seem promising, but don’t have much of a track record. They may be recent university graduates or people with only a few years of on-the-job experience. Sometimes, you’ll decide to take a chance on a newer engineer. For example, you may interview engineers who graduated at the top of their class from an accredited university. While those candidates haven’t proven themselves at work yet, they have obvious potential. On your team, these candidates could grow into top performers.
3. Hard Skills
Hard skills are measurable, easy-to-define skills that applicants have learned at school or in past jobs. When you’re hiring engineers, you can’t ignore hard skills. If candidates don’t have the right skills, it won’t be possible for them to do the job without training. For example, if you were hiring a civil engineer, you’d need someone with experience in AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and Microstation. Candidates without those hard skills wouldn’t be able to do the work successfully.
4. Soft Skills
While hard skills are essential, you can’t afford to forget about soft skills. Soft skills are harder to measure, and they’re often thought of as personality traits. For example, communication skills, work ethic, and being a team player are soft skills. Candidates could have impressive hard skills, but if they don’t have the right soft skills, they won’t succeed on your team.
5. Cultural Fit
Company culture refers to a company’s personality. Every company has its own culture. For example, some companies have a culture of working late to make sure everything gets done. Other companies have a culture of leaving at 5 p.m. on the dot. Some companies have a culture of teamwork and socializing with coworkers. At other companies, employees work individually most of the time. Whatever your culture is, you have to think about how candidates will fit in. When employees are a good cultural fit, they’ll be happier at work, which helps reduce turnover. Be sure to ask questions about cultural fit during interviews.
