Our Engineering Recruiting Philosophy
Many companies assume that recruiting is the same for all professions and that the process and ATS software does all of the work for candidate selection and identification. That is a dangerous assumption and can be devastating to your recruitment success when the concept of generic recruitment is applied to engineering recruiting. It is a huge mistake to assign an engineering project to someone with no training or experience in recruiting for engineers. Engineering recruitment has unique challenges that require specific knowledge and experience in a recruiter. We are engineering recruiting experts and we will explain what sets us apart.
Watch our Engineering Recruiting Services Video Introduction
Engineering Recruiting Firm
Since 2018, Right Recruiting has successfully filled over 53 positions including Mechanical Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Chemical Engineers and Industrial Engineers up to the Manager level.
The competition to find qualified engineers is fierce. Today’s demand on Engineering Recruiting Firms to source Engineering Professionals exceeds supply. That’s why you need Right Recruiting. We’re experts in engineering talent acquisition that will work to help your business soar.
Over the last few years, Right Recruiting has completed engineering recruiting projects in over 30 States in the US along with Canada and Europe.
Engineering recruitment is hard. In fact, recruiting for engineers is the most difficult part of recruiting. There are 3 reasons for that, and we will explore each of them below:
1) Engineering Titles are Meaningless and Are No Help To An Engineering Recruiter
In most companies, a Tax Accountant in Company A will be a Tax Accountant in Company B. An HR Business Partner in Company A will be an HR Business Partner in Company B. For many non-engineering projects, an average recruiter can do a simple title search and reach about 60% of appropriate candidates just based on title.
With engineering recruitment projects, titles are often meaningless. A Project Engineer in an engineering department at Company A may be called a Mechanical Engineer in Company B and a Manufacturing Engineer in Company C, ad infinitum. The best engineering recruiters always work hard in order to understand the actual job function that the candidate performs. They recognize if the function and the job specifications don’t match.
For example, in 2019 we had a project for a Senior Manufacturing Engineer who could design specialized, in-house production equipment for our client. If we had conducted that search just based on engineering title, we would have missed almost 80% of possible candidates. To make things worse, we would have pursued people with a Manufacturing Engineering title who were ill-equipped for our client because they had never designed machinery.
2) Industry is Important. It Provides Needed Context For The Engineering Recruiting Companies
Every industry represents different technology, either in its manufacturing process or its product design function and usually in both. This magnifies the issue mentioned above – meaningless titles.
Imagine a Manufacturing Engineer who works in the electronics industry. This is a person skilled in wire and cable harnesses, PCB and maybe SMT technologies. These are highly complex and specialized machines and are used in the manufacture of all electronic equipment.
Now imagine a Manufacturing Engineer in a machine shop/CNC environment. This is a person who works closely with metal working equipment like lathes, drills, brakes, presses, etc. This equipment is complex as well, but its complexity is focused on forming metal parts, not in assembling small components into an electronic device.
An inexperienced engineering recruiter may get excited that the titles of both these people match his or her engineering recruitment project, only to be disappointed that one or neither actually match the job specifications. That required industry specificity, such as defense research, may be very important for the hiring manager to strengthen his or her department.
It is not just function that is important in engineering recruitment, it is the context in which that function is used – the industry. We closely evaluate engineering skills and engineering management capabilities in the context of their industry when vetting candidates.
3) Engineers Themselves Are Unique
This is not when I say engineers are geeks. They are not. They are very, very intelligent people and usually have a passion for their profession that separates them from an ordinary corporate professional. We see candidates who have graduated from the top engineering schools that have worked hard for their engineering education and take their careers seriously.
Engineers, like most people, value salary and career track when evaluating an opportunity. But they also add another value to the equation as well. To a varying degree, engineers value the specific technical challenge that the product or process represents, irrespective of the employer or career track. Sometimes, that value system can lead an engineer’s decision making process into unique areas. For example, an appealing technology in a shaky company can be of more interest than a boring technology in a stable company. And, the engineer has every right to make that choice.
An inexperienced engineering recruiter may not recognize that distinction, and to make things worse, may not agree with it. That last thing can lead to a confrontational relationship between recruiter and candidate driven by the recruiter’s desire to convince the engineer how wrong he or she may be. A very bad approach.
The best engineering recruiters work hard to understand the candidate’s value system and tailors his or her research and approach to reveal areas of agreement and conflict. They accept that value system and create their job conversation to the candidate to reinforce the client’s strengths.
In the same vein, engineers are often not as career oriented as traditional professional and are often not natural networkers. This creates an added burden for the engineering recruiter. Why? Well basically engineers don’t update profiles regularly and are not as detail oriented when they do update. An engineering recruiter who just relies on buzz words or the candidate’s most recent job may miss good people. That profile may be 3 years old and may not have the required buzz word. A conversation may turn up an unmentioned current job that makes the person a perfect match. Engineering recruiting is hard work.
Call Right Recruiting at 215-641-9300 to start your Engineering Recruiting Process
Our Engineering Recruiting Approach
We approach engineering projects differently than most recruiters. Your average recruiter does two things on any project. The first is to figure out if there are any resumes on his or her desk that are close enough to talk the client into hiring. The second is to do a buzzword search on LinkedIn. If neither of those works, and they rarely do, the third step is to find an easier client.
We take a different approach. Here is a representative example.
We had a client in New Jersey who was seeking a Manufacturing Engineer for an electronics manufacturing facility. The assignment was for a BS Engineer with 5+ years of experience in manufacturing electrical or electronic products.
Our first step was to determine our targets. In other words, identify the companies who are located within a 45 minute drive of our client’s facility who would employ someone like that. In other words, find local electronic manufacturing firms from which we could pirate someone. Once we get that list, we find the person or people in each company who do that function. How do we do that? Old school and new school.
New school. Social media, alumni directories, society of women engineers and other sources. Old school. Call the company and get the name or names that we want.
Once we build our list of names, we create our narrative. That is our story that describes the job accurately and positively to those targeted candidates. Each prospect gets that narrative in two ways; email and over the phone.
We’ve had engineering recruiting projects in which we’ve had to speak to 200 people to get two resumes. Our approach is hard, but it does one thing – it gets our client the right candidate, not just the convenient candidate. And, our approach is appreciated by the prospect. The potential candidate gets in-depth information about the client when speaking to someone at Right Recruiting. We describe the potential opportunity in an accurate manner without slick rhetoric, that can be a turnoff to engineers.
No matter where you are in the US, we can find people for your technical positions. From here in Philly to New Hampshire down to Mississippi and out to Idaho. We’ve completed projects in all regions.
No matter what you need we can find your person. From mechanical design to manufacturing support to chemical process/product development to electrical engineer to automation, we’ve done that too. We have worked on projects involving mechanical engineering, computer engineering, mechatronics, research and development experts and electronics engineers to name a few. We have worked in many facets of the industry involving technical services and engineering services.
In fact, our first project for most clients is often an engineering recruitment project and that usually leads to assignments in other areas. We do a good job.