This blog will cover three effective interview techniques that can help you evaluate an engineering candidate’s technical skills, as well as their personality and soft skills.

3 Interview Techniques for Evaluating Engineering Candidates

Hiring engineering talent can be challenging, especially if you are not a trained engineer. How you evaluate their skills depends on the position you’re hiring for, the types of projects they’ll be working on, and your company culture. With so many different types of engineers, you need different interview techniques to evaluate them properly.

This blog will cover three effective interview techniques that can help you evaluate an engineering candidate’s technical skills, as well as their personality and soft skills.

1. Focus on Content

Before interviewing candidates, you must decide exactly what core skills you are looking for. Look at the purpose of the engineering role and what technical or practical expertise is needed. Consider bringing in one of your senior engineers to consult about exactly what skills you’re looking for. You could also ask your whole engineering team what questions they would like to be asked to test a candidate’s aptitude for the position.

2. Be Consistent

Once you establish what you are looking for, be consistent with each candidate interview. Ask every candidate the same questions; this will allow you to effectively compare candidates and more accurately determine who fits the role.

Consistency in your interview questions helps you avoid being biased toward candidates. Prime talent may not shine on paper. Resumes, specifically educational credits and past work experience, can be impressive. However, just because a candidate looks good on paper does not mean they will be a good fit for your company and the role in question. Asking consistent questions allows you to compare candidates on a level playing field.

3. Be Creative

When it comes to evaluating engineering talent, be creative with your questions. The goal is to evaluate how a candidate will handle a problem or provide a strategy to help them succeed in the role you seek to fill. Your engineering team can be very helpful in formulating questions that determine technical skills and assess the candidate’s soft skills in handling situations.

Conclusion

Preparing an effective engineering interview takes time, patience, and focus. By focusing on the hard and soft skills needed for the role and enlisting your engineering team to help you vet prospective candidates, you can develop practical questions and techniques to interview engineering candidates and find the right fit for the job.

Let us help you hire top engineering talent! Contact ABBTECH today!

Studying Engineering? Career Paths to Consider

You can pursue many career opportunities in engineering. There are many engineering career path to consider. Of course, each engineering career path has its pros and cons. If you know what to expect out of the different paths in engineering, you can plan accordingly. As a result, you can pursue an engineering career that meets your expectations.

Here are three engineering career paths to consider.

1. Network Engineer

A network engineer designs, builds, and maintains network infrastructure. The engineer can also work with software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs), unified communication systems, and cloud networks.

You can pursue network jobs at telecommunications companies and cloud computing providers. Meanwhile, network engineers are often hired for roles in retail, healthcare, finances, and many other industries as well.

Research indicates the average base salary of a network engineer is nearly $77,000. The job outlook for network engineers looks promising, too.

2. Application Engineer

Application engineers work with a business’ engineering teams and customers. The engineers use feedback to develop and implement software apps. In addition, they provide technical support, test apps, and lead software demonstrations.

Software companies and computer design firms are among the top employers for app engineers. However, app engineers are in high demand at companies of all sizes and across all industries.

Do not expect the demand for application engineers to slow down any time soon. Some experts predict demand for app engineers is expected to grow over the next few years. Furthermore, the average annual salary of app engineers in the United States exceeds $100,000.  

3. Cloud Engineer

As a cloud engineer, you’ll develop and maintain cloud infrastructure. You may design cloud solutions for an organization or code for cloud environments. Also, you may work with cloud networks and keep them running at peak levels.

The best cloud engineers stay up to date on the latest and greatest cloud technologies. These engineers know the ins and outs of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and other tech for managing cloud environments. Moreover, they can secure data in cloud environments and verify it is stored in accordance with myriad industry regulations.

As businesses take their operations into the cloud, they are on the lookout for quality cloud engineers. Therefore, demand for cloud engineers is likely to increase in the foreseeable future. At the same time, cloud engineers can expect a six-figure annual salary, and this total may continue to rise.

Find the Engineering Career That’s Right for You

For those who are studying engineering, evaluate your career options carefully. Think about your career interests and goals. Next, you can find an engineering specialty that suits you perfectly. There are many engineering career paths to consider and at this point, you can enroll in classes to help you build your skills in this specialty. You can eventually earn certifications and degrees that help you achieve your career aspirations. Lastly, if you want to look for engineering jobs, ABBTECH can help. We are an IT staffing agency that can keep you up to date about network, application, and cloud engineer jobs and many other engineering roles. For more information, browse our job board today.