Top Recruitment Strategies for Engineering Talent Acquisition
The hiring process requires a lot of attention, patience, and a lot of detail-oriented work. Posting job postings on job boards doesn’t always yield results in terms of attracting top talent. If you must fill every vacancy with the best candidate, you need to pay attention to your candidate sourcing process and the candidate experience.
Among the candidates in today’s work sphere, engineers are the ones that are most in-demand across sectors like manufacturing and financial services. This is because their job profiles are so varying and crucial to today’s technical challenges.
Let us look at various sourcing strategies that we can adopt to look for this sought-after group of people.
Employee referrals
Employee referrals are highly effective and popular. Referral candidates are often very effective, stay longer with the company, and are high-performing. Employees who work with their buddies often tend to perform extremely well. However, it is important to use this method of referrals in a diverse workforce. Having referrals from many employees with similar backgrounds may tend to flood the workplace into a homogeneous workforce. Also, it is not possible to rely on only this tool to fill job vacancies. It is effective as one of the tools for talent acquisition of Engineers.
Social media
Many organizations have used the power of social media very effectively in their talent acquisition methods. Platforms like LinkedIn have made it easier for potential recruits to get in touch with the recruiting manager. The only issue is that social media generally attracts a demographically younger population in the age group 26 to 35 years of age. This limits the reach of this platform as the sole method to recruit engineering talent.
Attracting students through internships
Companies need to form relationships with universities. This can open up a path to connect with many talented engineering students. Attracting these students with interesting internship opportunities can provide a pipeline of talented potential employees who can be absorbed into the company after they complete their studies. Having done the internship, they are familiar and already knowledgeable about how the company functions. Thus, a powerful connection with potential employees can be built very strategically.
Include a competitive engineering salary range on job postings
Let us face it, salary is a major motivator in a job posting. Listing the salary range can attract a lot of talented people. Filling in job applications is a time-consuming process and when candidates are investing so much time, knowing the salary range is an added attraction that will make them feel that their time was worth the investment. Apart from that, listing a competitive salary range can also boost your company’s brand. Employees like it when they know what to expect and where they stand on the pay scale. Also, a lot of time can be saved at the time of negotiating the salary during the hiring process.
Highlight company culture
Engineers want to know about the culture of the company before they accept a job offer. It is important to share the Vision, Mission, Values, and Goals of the company to be able to attract candidates who can share your goals. Apart from benefits and salary, candidates need to know what value a company can add to them. You can highlight your company culture as unique in job posts, social media posts, and job interviews. For instance, if you do offer remote working or a flexible work schedule, be sure to mention it in all your interactions. This will interest employees seeking a good work-life balance. If your company offers professional development support for academics and training, be sure to highlight it so that those interested can be aware of these benefits.
Working with a recruitment agency specializing in Engineers
Partnering with a specialized recruitment agency can give you access to quality talent and recruiting experts. Several recruitment agencies use complex talent-matching software to assess a candidate’s skills, experience, and qualifications. Therefore working with a recruitment agency offers a competitive edge in terms of data-driven searching and talent matching along with expert consultation from recruiters. Another advantage of working with a recruitment agency is that you get access to quality talent whose references have already been checked out. Also, the large pool of candidates will help you fill the vacancies faster.
Conclusion
Today’s talent crisis has made hiring more difficult than ever before. Recruiting engineers typically has a lot of competition. The demand for qualified engineers is high and companies are doing everything to attract the best candidates. Also, many engineers who are already employed are not actively looking for a job. They are passive candidates and are more difficult to target than active candidates as they have to be incentivized to leave their present jobs. Engineering is also a highly technical field and hence a technical recruiter has to be involved in gauging the candidate before he or she reaches a hiring manager. While all these are challenging aspects, we do hope the strategies outlined above can help you recruit engineering talent. Check out Xpheno’s Executive Search program on our website to hire top talent like engineers.
