Are you trying to recruit a team of engineers for a new project? Finding the right engineering talent isn't easy and it can be a particular challenge if you need to hire several people as you must ensure that they have the right skills to complement each other. You don't want to find out part-way through the project that your engineering team doesn't work well together or that they lack a vital skill needed to complete the project.
What makes engineers different?
An engineering qualification is a good place to start when searching for engineers but it can't tell you everything you need to know. Two engineers may have identical qualifications but they could have developed entirely different skillsets depending on where they have been working, the challenges they have had to overcome and the types of project they have been employed on. If you decide to hire engineers it is always important to enquire specifically about the projects they have worked on, and to look for similarities with the type of work you want them to undertake.
Make it easy and hire a team
Instead of hiring engineers directly on to your payroll it often makes more sense to outsource your project to a specialist engineering team. By bringing a team on board you can be sure of having sufficient breadth of experience within the team to tackle whatever challenges they may have to face.
To choose the right team of engineers you should look for an engineering team that is technically competent enough to complete your project, but especially remember to check that they already have clients working in a similar industry niche to your business. The more experience they have working with companies like yours the easier it will be to explain to them exactly what you need and what the desired outcomes of your engineering project will look like.
Capturing your vision
Technical competence is vital, but a good working relationship is always about more than that. When selecting your engineering team you should try to ask prospective teams questions about the way they work. Ideally you want to find engineers who do more than simply solve individual problems. You want to find people who are capable of taking a holistic approach. They should be able to examine the big picture and see how a single challenge appears within the entire project. Being able to take an overview will allow them to suggest options that could improve the entire project and and perhaps drive it forward in a new and more fulfilling direction.