Hiring Engineering Graduates: Why these pre-hire assessments should be adopted
Engineering Graduates are currently one of the most sought-after graduate roles. As professionals in talent acquisition, you will be aware that competition for top engineering graduate talent is high and companies cannot seem to hire candidates fast enough to meet the demand. To address these challenges effectively, it is crucial to prioritize integrating objective, job-relevant, skills-based assessments into your recruitment strategy. This will not only save you time and resources, but also enhance the quality of your hires.
In this concise guide, we recommend step-by-step the best pre-employment assessments and selection tools for hiring an Engineering Graduate, ensuring you select the top candidates who have the necessary skills to succeed in your engineering role and organization.
Contents:
- What is an Engineering Graduate and what do they do?
- What is the ideal assessment process to hire the best Engineering Graduate?
- Concluding remarks
1. What is an Engineering Graduate and what do they do?
What is an Engineering Graduate?
An Engineering Graduate is an entry-level position within the engineering field, commonly recruited through structured graduate schemes offered by leading industry employers. These schemes are designed to provide graduates with valuable opportunities to expand their knowledge, hone their expertise, and learn about specialized engineering disciplines.
What are the main types of engineering specialization for a graduate?
An Engineering Graduate may enter a specialized graduate program from the outset or choose to specialize as they progress. The primary specialized branches of engineering are:
- Chemical Engineering
- Civil Engineering
- Electrical Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering
- Software Engineering
- Transportation Engineering
What would be the roles and responsibilities of an Engineering Graduate for my organization?
In their various disciplines, the core duty of Engineering Graduates is to contribute to the efficiency of projects and systems under the supervision of senior engineers, whether through designing innovative solutions, conducting research, preparing models, or optimizing processes using different tools and technologies.
Common responsibilities for an Engineering Graduate include:
- Designing, developing, testing, and deploying models, products, and innovative solutions
- Applying engineering principles and techniques to solve technical problems
- Conducting project research and analysis
- Analyzing data and performing calculations
- Continuously learning about and understanding the lifecycle of the organization’s products, processes, and systems
- Utilizing computer-aided design (CAD) software and other technologies
- Communicating findings and ideas through project reports and presentations
- Collaborating and communicating with senior engineers, multidisciplinary teams, and clients
What essential skills does an Engineering Graduate need to be successful within my organization?
There are numerous soft skills as well as specialized technical knowledge, skills, and competencies which are fundamental to succeed within engineering, a highly-skilled profession. The following should, therefore, be assessed in your Engineering Graduate hiring process:
- Problem-solving skills
- Critical thinking skills
- Technical engineering proficiency
- Communication and interpersonal skills
- Teamwork
- Analytical and numeracy skills
- Adaptability
- Innovation and creativity
- Time management
- Project management skills
- Attention to detail
- Leadership skills
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2. What is the ideal assessment process to hire the best Engineering Graduate?
When building a pre-employment hiring assessment process tailored to your Engineering Graduate role, it is crucial to align the assessments with the role’s requirements, ensuring the relevant skills and competencies are effectively assessed. By doing so, you can accurately predict candidates’ on-the-job performance and make well-informed hiring decisions.
That is why we have outlined step-by-step the most robust hiring assessment process which will provide a comprehensive understanding into your engineering candidates so you can confidently hire the right candidates, first time.
1. Pre-employment Aptitude Tests
At the initial stage of your Engineering Graduate assessment process, it is best practice to first present candidates with selected online pre-employment aptitude tests. These assessments enable fast and accurate evaluation and sifting of applicants, identifying those who have the desired technical skills and knowledge for your engineering role.
What aptitude tests should I include at the initial sifting stage of my Engineering Graduate recruitment process?
For your Engineering Graduate role, you should consider including all or a combination of these skill-based pre-employment aptitude tests:
- A pre-employment numerical reasoning test: Engineering Graduates will be tasked with analyzing large datasets, making fast data-based decisions, and employing advanced mathematical and statistical techniques in design and implementation of engineering models and solutions. Therefore, evaluating candidates’ numerical aptitude and analytical skills through a numerical reasoning test is imperative to determine whether they can effectively interpret and manage numerical information.
- A pre-employment verbal reasoning assessment: Whilst engineering is a highly technical discipline, often involving individual work, engineering projects will always require close team collaboration and communication across the organization. Engineering Graduates will also frequently navigate diverse communication styles and forms, switching between technical and non-technical language and oral and written and public presentations. A verbal reasoning test is thus a valuable tool to assess candidates’ verbal comprehension and communication skills.
- A pre-employment logical reasoning test: Engineering Graduates will additionally need to promptly identify and solve complex technical problems and challenges using innovative and creative methods. A logical reasoning test is designed to test candidates’ problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, and logical approach to challenges. This assessment, therefore, is essential to identify candidates who are adept problem-solvers and logical thinkers, ensuring they pass to the next recruitment stage.
Did you know that combining aptitude tests at the initial sifting stage of your Engineering Graduate assessment process can reduce your candidate pool by 50%? This is particularly beneficial for graduate schemes to save time and speed up screening high volumes of candidate applications.
2. Pre-employment Coding Tests
At this initial assessment stage, or at the next stage, you may choose to also add pre-employment coding tests to your Engineering Graduate assessment plan to assess candidates’ programming and problem-solving skills and attention to detail within the context of engineering. These assessments can vary depending on the specific role, engineering field, and company preference, but they often require candidates to:
- create coding solutions to engineering-related problems
- develop efficient algorithms to optimize processes and manipulate data structures
- write clean structured code using programming languages such as Python, MATLAB, C/C++, Java
- handle errors, troubleshoot, and debug code
- analyze the time and space complexity of their code solutions
- apply fundamental engineering and programming concepts to real-world challenges
A combination of these engineering coding assessments will supplement and enhance your Engineering Graduate assessment process and play an important role in identifying candidates with the necessary programming skills and attention to detail to succeed in engineering roles which require coding proficiency.
3. A Pre-hire Video Interview
For the subsequent stage of your Engineering Graduate assessment process, we suggest asking candidates to take a one-way timed video interview. During this stage, candidates will respond to a set of predefined questions with recorded answers, allowing you to gain deeper insights into their skills, relevant engineering experience and knowledge, and alignment with the role requirements.
As a recruiter, how should I design my Engineering Graduate video interview?
Your Engineering Graduate video interview could be strength-based, competency-based, or technical. Technical questions should aim to assess their engineering knowledge and expertise in specific areas relevant to the role. Incorporating general questions about candidates’ motivations, aspirations, and interest in engineering and your company can also provide valuable insights.
As assessors, you can apply your own hiring criteria when selecting candidates. Therefore, you can seamlessly determine which candidates are best-fit for your role and company and advance them to the assessment center stage.
For example, you could ask candidates to describe a recent project they have planned, developed, and implemented, in particular, listening out for what they did right, what they could have improved, and what they learned.
4. An Assessment Center
The penultimate stage of your Engineering Graduate assessment process, particularly relevant if you are recruiting for an Engineering graduate scheme, involves inviting your top shortlisted candidates to a virtual or in-person assessment center. This assessment day is strategically designed to uncover your candidates’ strengths and the breadth of their skills. By obtaining this holistic understanding of your candidates, you can make the most informed hiring decisions and select the right candidates, first time.
How should I set up an assessment center for my Engineering Graduate role?
During your assessment center for the Engineering Graduate role, it is best practice to present candidates with a series of exercises designed to assess their abilities, competencies, and strengths. These exercises may include:
- A group exercise assessing candidates’ teamwork abilities when faced with challenges, support for team members, communication skills, and leadership potential
- An individual or group presentation
- Numerical tasks evaluating candidates’ ability to work with numbers, charts, and graphs
- A face-to-face interview, which could focus on strengths, behavioral responses to workplace situations, along with questions related to experience, achievements, and knowledge of your company
As assessors, a combination of these exercises will offer you invaluable insights to determine which candidates are best-fit for your engineering role, team dynamics, and company culture.
5. A Technical Final Interview
The ultimate assessment stage for most Engineering Graduate programmes typically entails a final technical interview conducted by senior staff and managers from the respective specialist engineering department. Here, you can delve further into understanding the engineering acumen of your final candidates and assess their proficiency in the specific skills relevant to the chosen field of engineering. This interview process highlights who your best-fit top candidates are, ready for hiring.
You could try structuring your Engineering Graduate technical interview around visual information, diagrams, or code depending on your specific engineering role and field and ask candidates to then explain the technical details, engineering components, and processes to you.
3.Concluding remarks
Integrating these specific assessments into your Engineering Graduate recruitment process will quickly provide comprehensive and reliable insights into each candidate and showcase their diverse skill sets and behavioral competencies. This invaluable objective understanding will empower you, as recruiters and hiring managers, to select the best-fit top candidates to shortlist and, ultimately, hire for your company to take the business to the next level.
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