Looking for your next engineering job? Don’t work with just any staffing agency. Work with a recruiter who knows your industry inside and out.
It’s important to not only choose the best recruiter to highlight your skills, but also find a company that truly gets your niche. A general recruiter may not have the experience and knowledge needed to truly understand what you do and what you want in a position.
With years of experience in engineering and manufacturing recruiting, our team at Strom MN knows just what to look for. Keep reading to learn how to choose an engineering recruitment agency and learn the right questions to ask, so you can work with the best company for you.
Checklist for Choosing an Engineering Recruitment Agency
1. Browse Open Job Postings
The easiest way to get a feel for an engineering recruitment agency is to jump straight to their job postings and start browsing. This will give you a good idea as to the focus (or lack thereof) of the recruiting agency. Look not just for general engineering jobs, but also for specific positions like mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, structural engineering, etc.
If they post a wide variety of jobs from all industries, it may not be a good fit for you. An agency that focuses on engineering will have more relevant company contacts and be better equipped to match you with a potential job.
Also look to see what information is available publicly, and how much the agency keeps close to their chest. Ideally, you’ll want to see key information publicly available for each job posting – essential duties, location and qualifications.
Related Content: Explore Our Open Engineering Positions
2. Check Out Reviews
The easiest way to determine the credibility of a recruitment company is to head straight to their reviews — from both employers and employees. From an employer perspective, you can see how the agency works with companies, whether they stay in communication, and what their overarching goals are. From an employee perspective, you can see if people like working with the agency, determine whether job searchers have liked their placements, and gain insight into company values and how they work.
A great tip for finding both the good and bad of a company is to filter 3-star reviews, so you can get an unbiased view of the agency. Then, look at the extreme negatives and positives. This gives you a good idea of the reality of the company. Also look at how the company responds to reviews. A negative review doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a bad fit for you, but seeing how they react to negative feedback can help inform if you want to work with them.
3. Determine Their Speciality
It can be extremely helpful to match up a recruitment agency’s specialty to what you’re looking for. A generic recruiter has a wider pool of irrelevant jobs and industries to sift through. In many cases, organizations who are looking for engineers won’t work with general recruiters and instead will only work with a recruiter who specializes in manufacturing, construction, industrial work, etc.
Here at Strom MN, we focus on engineering and manufacturing in particular, and we have an ongoing relationship with relevant organizations in Minnesota and the surrounding region.
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4. Ask the Right Questions
Once you find a contender for your next recruitment agency, it’s important to ask the right questions. We recommend asking these 10 key questions of any engineering recruiter:
- What experience do you have with the engineering industry, specifically?
- How do you alert applicants to open jobs?
- What are the top 3 qualifications required for this position?
- Why is this position open?
- How long has this position been open?
- What is the company culture like?
- Is this a temp-to-hire opportunity?
- What do you know about the company?
- What does the interview process look like?
- Do I need to follow up with the company directly?
With the right questions, you can sift through to decide whether the recruitment agency has the jobs you’re looking for and can support you in the ways that you need. If at any point you feel uncomfortable during the process, it’s 100% okay to take a step back and try again with another recruitment agency. At the end of the day, you know what support you need.
Find an Engineering Recruitment Agency
Using the above checklist, you can find the right engineering recruitment for you in no time. If you want a head start, our team at Strom MN has hundreds of engineering-based positions open at a time. Browse our database to see if your skills match up with one of our open positions and reach out when you’re ready. If a position is a good match, we’ll get in touch.
Strom Minnesota is an engineering and technical recruitment agency that specializes in high-skilled job candidates for highly technical positions. We facilitate contract employment, project staffing, temp-to-perm and direct hire opportunities. Industries served include IT, engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. We are affiliated with Strom Engineering, a national staffing and recruitment agency.
