How To Hire A Civil Engineer
Maintaining momentum is vital if you want to recruit the best civil engineering candidates. Here Jason Cachia explains how to do it.
Recruiting civil engineers can sometimes feel like a race against the clock. The saying that ‘good candidates have a short shelf life’ is something many companies come to appreciate when trying to source and engage top talent in this field. If your recruitment process takes too long, you may find the best civil engineering candidates accepting offers from other companies before you’re in a position to make yours.
Therefore, to give your organisation the best chance of recruiting top talent, it is important to streamline your recruitment process to keep civil engineering candidates engaged and focused with your job opportunity. Below are some tips for optimising your recruitment for today’s competitive market.
7 Tips For Recruiting Civil Engineers
#1: Set A Deadline
Recruitment timelines slip when there are no targets or deadlines to meet. If your recruitment process is open-ended you can easily lose momentum and candidates along the way. Set deadlines for each milestone with speed as a key driver to secure the best civil engineering candidate. It is also beneficial to communicate your timeline with candidates to keep them engaged with the process.
#2: Get Everyone Signed Up
It is important that everyone involved in making recruitment decisions is 100% committed to your timeline. Companies lose out on great candidates when key decision makers are unavailable to attend an interview or review the shortlist of candidates. So make sure that no one is planning a holiday or business trip, and that time has been allocated to ensure a friction free recruitment process.
#3: Provide Candidates With Plenty Of Information
Of course candidates can do their own research on your company – and they should – but in a competitive market you need to sell your job opportunity as much as they need to sell their skills and experience. Therefore provide them with a detailed job description, information about your company such as structure / hierarchy, culture, and clients. Differentiate your job opportunity by providing the backstory and engaging them with your company.
#4: Tailor Your Interview Process To The Candidate
Before an interview, take the time to review the candidate’s CV with the interview panel and other interested parties, and prepare some talking points and relevant lines of questioning. By personalising the interview process – instead of using standard interview questions – you will get much more insight into the candidate and vice versa. Personalising the interview will also demonstrate your company’s interest in them, and make a better impression.
#5: Be Passionate About Your Opportunity
Job interviews can be very one-sided with the employer interviewing the candidate and taking a few questions towards the end. The assumption is that if the candidate is attending the interview, they want the job. However, that’s not the case. Candidates attend interviews to find out if they want the job. They want to find out whether your company is a good fit for them, and whether the opportunity is as good in reality as it might appear on paper. Therefore, you need to get them excited about your opportunity and working for your company.
#6: Follow Up Within 48 Hours
Make sure that you follow up after each interview quickly so you don’t lose momentum. Let candidates know when to expect to hear from you again, and keep communicating with them throughout the process. If you have second or third interviews to do, plan these at the start so that there’s no delay in progressing civil engineering candidates through the process.
#7: Don’t Stick To Your Timeline!
If you find a great civil engineering candidate, make an offer or invite them to the next round of interviews as soon as you’ve had a chance to review them. There’s no need to stick to your timeline and wait for 48 hours or to see other candidates if you’ve found the right person for the job. Fast track them through your recruitment process and lay out the red carpet.
It is a challenge to find and recruit civil engineering candidates. So when you do identify potential new hires, make sure you can maintain the momentum and keep them engaged with your company right up until you can make an offer, or not. Don’t hang around, be organised, streamline your recruitment process and you’ll have an edge over those competitors who have not.
For support recruiting civil engineers and other candidates in the construction engineering sector, give me a call to discuss your requirements. You can contact me on +44 (0)1252 413 080 or email mailto:[email protected]