Top Strategies: Recruiting Defense/Space Engineers

5 Top Strategies for Defense/Space Engineering Recruitment:

1.)   Know the playing field.

The sub-field which you are recruiting for has a limited pool of people in it, and these people are working on a handful of projects/programs. Awareness of these projects gives you a great idea of where you need to be looking. For example, let’s say you need an engineer in Colorado that specializes in guidance of space vehicles. It would make a lot of sense to look in Colorado for this kind of expertise, but it likely would be wise to expand yourself to the Cape Canaveral area in Florida, Los Angeles, and a handful of other places as well, as there are a number of space vehicles being developed there that require guidance/navigation. Whatever the subject matter expertise you need, there are good places look. Knowing them will substantially reduce the time frame to finding quality candidates, allowing to quickly fill the job opening(s) and make progress on projects!

2.)   Understand technical overlapping subjects.

Having a deep understanding of the subjects that you are recruiting for and their overlapping “neighbor” subjects enables you to see good candidates that are hiding in plain sight — this also gives you a qualitative advantage over others looking for the same talent! An example of a fields that have overlaps but are different in name are image processing and signal processing — both are highly quantitative fields and can use many of the same algorithms and approaches in problem solving. While not perfectly interchangeable, many people who have one set of qualifications can also possess the other set! There are many overlapping technical subjects and knowing them can give you a huge advantage in finding qualified engineers. Because the best recruiters can surgically break down the job requirements of a role and which technical areas intersect (and which don’t), they are equipped to bring your team the shortest possible list of the best candidates — this has the added advantage of saving your team valuable time reviewing and interviewing candidates! Cast your net to include “neighbor” subjects, but always be selective with you move forward with interviewing, since time is money!

3.)   Understand subjects that sound similar but are completely different.

Conversely to being familiar with overlapping subjects, it is also important to be able to differentiate between specialties that may sound similar, but involve different skills. It can take certain acumen to discern that some engineers with the same titles do completely different work. For example, your job title may be for an “FPGA Engineer”. FPGAs are a large field and the professionals that work on them can have very different backgrounds in the field. Are they doing FPGA design or verification/testing? While many engineers may have done some of both, often it makes sense to specialize in subsets in this field — thus a design engineer will not be very equipped to handle a position that requires verification (and vice versa). Make sure your recruitment strategy involves effectively filtering the “neighbor” skills that you are NOT looking for!

4.)   Being mindful of candidate’s career goals — how is your company geared to set people up for success?

This cannot be understated. Candidates will have different career goals and interests. Younger and mid-career professionals that are highly technical may be seeking mentorship, and interesting technical challenges. Some may be interested in management opportunities, or customer-facing experience. How is your company positioned to help people grow? More experienced technical professionals may be interested in continuing work in their niche. Or, perhaps, they may have gone down a management path and want to go back to the technical hands-on work. Your firm needs to clearly articulate how it can partner with the candidate to further their interests. After all, it is in everyone’s long-term interests that the deal is win-win.

5.)   Hiring as specialized placement firm, like StellaScope Recruitment.

There are potent advantages to this option. Firstly, a specialized recruiter will recognize the subject-matter you are looking for and the landscape of qualified personnel. This brings your company the advantages of having a partner that can implement the strategies we are discussing! StellaScope Recruitment is specifically focused on the Defense and Space industries — we have a technical background in a multitude of engineering disciplines and a strong network within our domain. Our clients enjoy the advantage of conserving valuable resources because we bring a small set of strong-fitting resumes — saving our clients time in both reading resumes and interviews. If you are serious about finding the right engineer quickly, find us on LinkedIn or contact us on our website: stellascope.us

Happy recruiting!