Collaborating with Your Engineering Job Recruiters Equals Hiring Success

Engineering job recruiters are an extension of your company. They are the eyes, ears, and mouthpiece for your organization.

With that in mind, it’s so important that as the leader of your organization you understand and support this concept, and if you have a hiring manager, they need to understand this as well. The more cohesive the collaboration is between your company and the recruiter/recruiting firm you work with, the greater the success rate in getting your position filled with the right candidates.

Whether you have an internal recruiting team or utilize external recruiting resources, such as the recruiting firm you partner with, whoever is recruiting employees needs to get a clear understanding of how the employee that you’re trying to hire will fit inside your organization.

This not only means that the engineering job recruiters need to understand the technical skills required of the job that you’re trying to fill, but they also need to understand how the employee will “fit” within your organization. They need a clear understanding of your company’s culture, the culture of the specific department that they’d be working in, and also with the leadership style of who the employee will be reporting. They need all of this to determine the traits required to be a successful “fit” in the role and company.

Once the recruiter has a clear understanding of the role and traits best suited for the role, then the painstaking process of identifying talent begins. This is especially true in the Engineering world or any field where the supply of qualified talent is low and the demand is high.

In this case, a much more strategic and proactive approach is required – this is time consuming and tedious work and requires reaching out to prospective candidates that aren’t expecting the recruiter’s call because they aren’t actively seeking new opportunities. This is where the recruiter’s ability to market on your company’s behalf comes in.

Again, the more collaborative the relationship, the better the recruiter will be able to sell your opportunity to the candidate because they will be very clear on what your company offers and whether what you have to offer aligns with the candidate’s “hot buttons” or reasons why they might consider leaving their current role.

Once the recruiter identifies a prospective candidate who has any hint of interest, especially if it’s in a profession like engineering (again, low supply and high demand), then this collaboration between the recruiter and the hiring manager becomes even more important.

I’ve mentioned this in several other blog posts, but I’ll say it again because it’s so important. Once that candidate is identified, you must move them quickly through your process. Quickly enough to keep them engaged, but not so quick that you compromise your process or hurry things along too quickly that it scares the candidate – especially engineering candidates. They need to process and weigh their options. This takes time, which you need to give to them…but not too much time. One of the recruiter’s jobs is to really get to know the candidate so they can help bring things along at the pace that accomplishes the balance of these things.

Listen to your engineering job recruiters! Again, this is a collaboration. They are your best ally in getting your company’s roles filled with top talent, and they provide excellent insight to what others are saying about your company. As I mentioned earlier, they are the eyes and ears for your company. In their discussions with prospective candidates, they are hearing about your company’s reputation – good, bad or otherwise.

No matter what business you’re in, you can’t see your blind spots, and by utilizing a recruiter, you’ll find out things about your company that you would never know without one. The feedback they give you can be extremely valuable as you shape and tweak your company culture to better attract the A-Players.

Also, make sure you are providing your recruiting team with valuable feedback about the candidates they are presenting so they know whether they are on track and have a clear understanding of your needs. There is nothing more frustrating to a recruiter then not receiving clear feedback – feedback is critical to a recruiter’s ability to find you exactly what you’re looking for, so the clearer the feedback, the better.

It’s also important from the perspective of the candidate. Again, the recruiter’s job is to market your company. Whether you move forward with an offer to the candidate or not, you want to leave the candidate with a positive impression and feedback helps with this.

Recruiting is a long-game and about relationship building – the candidate you decide not to move forward with can be your best resource for referring others to the position if it’s handled correctly by the company and recruiter.

Remember, hiring the wrong employee is one of the most expensive mistakes any company can make. By the time you’ve either decided to fire them or they’ve decided that your business wasn’t the right fit, you’ve used up a lot of two of the most precious resources for any business: time and money. And no matter what your business is, you cannot dedicate 100% of your time toward finding the right employees. Why not turn over the task to professionals – the engineering job recruiters?

Just like you probably wouldn’t do all the graphic design work in your company by yourself, it makes sense to get help from experts when it comes to recruiting. Once a recruiter knows the type of employee that will be a great fit inside your company, the more successful your business will be.

~ Alissa