Today’s skilled talent market is extremely tight. It can be frustrating to lose great candidates, but you can’t always blame the market if your competitors are winning all the talent. If you hope to attract and retain the best and brightest, you’ve got to focus on what those high performers want.

Want High-Performance Engineers? You Must Be a High-Performance Business

In order to attract high-performance engineers, you must be seen as a high-performance company. Talented candidates will be looking to see if your organization:

• Has high-performing leadership: Standards start at the top. Talented engineers will research company leaders, their achievements and their leadership style.
• Is strategically aligned: Work should be aligned with your organizational goals. If you take a haphazard approach to goals, work and what “success” looks like you won’t attract high-caliber engineers.
• Values its people: If you want to attract the best, you must focus on and value talent management. Build a strong employer brand, utilize HR as a strategic partner, and work with your talent to help them develop their careers and achieve their goals.
• Dynamic culture: Your corporate culture can make or break your ability to hire top talent. Make sure your culture is clearly defined, realistic and cultivates engagement.

Attracting Top Talent

Posting jobs and waiting for rock-star engineers to find you is not a recipe for success. You must focus on building your employer brand using the points mentioned above. If you can cultivate a reputation as a high-performance firm that focuses on people and culture, strong candidates will follow.

As you promote your brand and connect with passive candidates, make sure to create a strong employer value proposition. What does your company offer that sets you apart in the mind of a top engineer? Consider pay, benefits, flexible work arrangement, task diversity, professional development and culture are all things that in-demand engineers are looking for from a potential employer.

Retaining Top Talent

It’s not enough to hire a great engineer, you’ve got to be able to retain them if you want to win the battle for talent over your competitors. Once someone is hired, don’t forget about them. Learn what their goals are and be a champion for their career. Offer opportunities to learn and grow and advance.

Culture is also a critical piece of the retention puzzle. Study the impact your culture has on high performers, and address any areas that may impede their success and engagement. This can be done through data collected in annual reviews, exit interviews or “stay” interviews where you ask top performers to discuss what they like about their job, the company, its culture, etc.

Are You Looking for Engineering Talent?

If you are looking for high-performance engineers who can help your organization achieve its goals, contact the experts at PEAK Technical Staffing today to learn how can help you win the battle for talent.

About PEAK

PEAK Technical Staffing is a leading provider of engineering staffing services, offering contract staffing, contract-to-hire and direct hire solutions throughout the United States. With nearly 50 years of technical recruiting experience, we find solutions that meet more than just your technical requirements.

We work closely with you to make sure every candidate fits your company’s unique needs and culture. See some of the engineering jobs we have recently filled for our clients:

• Manufacturing Engineer – 74051
• Quality Engineer – 74013
• Senior Systems Engineer – 74135

If you are looking for skilled, experienced engineering professionals to help your business succeed, contact the recruiting experts at PEAK Technical Staffing today.