How to find experienced engineers if you are not technically proficient

UNITEDCODE
8 min readJun 7, 2022

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Finding a genuine professional is not an easy challenge. Building a team of good professionals could be a difficult and long process in general. But How To Hire Engineer and at what parameters you should pay attention while searching?

Now let’s determine the best way to look for your engineer by yourself, thanks to a recruiting agency, or if there are any other alternative options.

What recruitment skills you should apply

If you have already made up your mind to find a specialist on your own, then you should be ready for several search stages. Now you have to play a role of an HR manager and find your ideal candidate. Let’s see what important steps you need to go through to find a perfect engineer for your company.

Understanding of needed position while hiring an engineer

Tracking down a candidate for an engineering position on your own without an understanding of the operating environment will be very problematic. Nevertheless, there are various ways in which you can at least roughly imagine what your future employee will look like. If you feel that it is too difficult for you, there is always another way we are going to tell you in the final part.

Let us introduce you to the primary skills pack for every employee, which are hard skills and soft skills. Hard skill contains all the technical necessities, like the use of Figma for designers or WordPress for Content Managers.

Of course, it is just the list of common must-have skills for every engineer. Furthermore, you should pay attention to what programs and tools the candidate can use.

The more experience he has, the better. Check the company he has worked with and review his education field in his CV. All of these will help you to build a strong image of how much this candidate is experienced and professional.

Soft skills are a critical aspect as well. You should pay attention to the engineer’s responses, communication style, and the ability to teamwork. Do not forget to show your own soft skills during all the interview steps, as it can be a significant measure to choose the company for the full-time work.

The search for that one CV for great hires

Let’s imagine you are on the second step: you have already made a vacancy description and determine for yourself whom you’re looking for. Your next move is to select where you would like to find a candidate. Of course, it depends on which country you’re going to find a specialist in, but already you have a few platforms to choose from:

Be aware that these platforms can ask you for extra taxes to have full free access to services. Be ready to spend some time, but at least it will be faster if you will find an employee through any recruiting agency. The reason is that you will spend a lot of time finding 2–3 candidates that suit you best, and recruiters will constantly send you numerous CVs of people that in fact do not meet all the requirements. So if you would rather not waste your time reviewing a pile of CVs, take the control of the case.

Coding test

Once you have found a couple of great candidates, you should provide them with a coding exercise. First, it will show the engineer’s skills. Secondly, it will show if the specialist can deal with the tasks you need.

For example, you can ask an engineer to build a simple client for a public API. It will show how ready is he for working with a real system, finding and dealing with errors or other network issues. When the candidate will send the ready task, just ask your other engineer to check it. If you do not have a team of engineers yet, check if the program works by yourself. It can be a less detailed examination, but at least you can make sure whether the API works or not.

Final Step

The last but not the least step is a contract. You have finally found an engineer that can deal with your company’s tasks, it is time to prepare all the documents. Make an offer for your specialist and consider if you need to cooperate under the NDA document. NDA — is a non-disclosure agreement. So make sure if your candidate to work with it.

No one said that the way would be easy. But even if all these steps seem too hard and time-consuming, be sure that you will still have more pros this way than working with recruiters.

Best countries to find a skilled technical engineer

If you are serious about finding your ideal candidate, then there is no stopping you from a great distance. According to statistics, there are over 9 million ICT experts in European countries presently, which is about 5% of all IT experts in the world. The number of experts has grown, especially after the pandemic in 2020. Find out more about recruiting engineers abroad.

Currently, the market for ICT specialists continues to grow, since EU countries offer high-quality education. The number of engineers may be different, but the meaning is the same. European engineers are the main target of most recruiters in 2022. Their salary expectations may be a little lower than the specialists from America, but their skills and experience are not worse, and sometimes even much better. So, the top places to look for jobseekers:

  • Central Europe: Most of the best specialists in Europe come from Albania, Montenegro, and Serbia. Most of them go to work in countries such as Germany or Denmark, as specialists from these countries are highly valued in the labor market.
  • Eastern Europe: The IT field is quite developed in such countries as Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. For example, Ukraine is considered one of the most digitalized in Europe at the moment. Engineers from Ukraine are also highly valued in the labor market and do not stay long in their country. Top specialists usually work for US and Chinese companies. Read more about hiring an engineer from Ukraine here.
  • Latin America: Specialists from such countries as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chili also attract leading IT companies from America, so pay attention to engineers from these countries while searching. Presently, these countries are considered to be among the fastest-growing in the field of IT and educating new specialists.

Searching for professionals from other countries, simply specify the filter you need on the platforms we mentioned earlier. You can also compare professionals from different countries and find the right one for you, not only regarding skills but also in terms of mentality.

Advantages of recruitment agencies

Asking recruiters to help in seeking candidates is the easiest way, but is it worth it? While recruiting agencies can find highly specialized candidates and take all the responsibility on themselves, they still have numerous pitfalls. We collected all the cons to determine the best way to find IT, specialists.

  • No examination of candidates. While you will spend some time vetting your specialist, giving them test assignments, and so on, the recruitment agency will handle it. So don’t expect the engineer that the agency picks up for you to be highly qualified.
  • Choosing candidates by the wrong criteria. As a rule, recruiters search for specialists based on two criteria: education and work experience. But unfortunately, this is not enough. Occasionally, you need to use much more than just two “filters” to find a specialist. Especially when it comes to an IT engineer.
  • Ignorance of your company’s specifics. When a recruiter agency starts a candidate search, they don’t delve into the specifics of your company’s work. This means that the future job seeker will not be aware of what your company works with and aspires to. This can cause a certain amount of dissonance between the candidate and the company.
  • High prices. Be prepared for the fact that the recruitment agency will ask for a lot of money for the search for your engineer.
  • No guarantees. Even though a recruiting agency will ask you for a hefty fee, they do not guarantee that they will be able to find you a specialist. So, it could also be a waste of money.

If you are not satisfied with all of the above disadvantages of working with a recruiting agency, we offer you an alternative.

Benefits of working with UNITEDCODE company

While recruiting agencies will require numerous funds, and independent searches will require a lot of time, there is an alternative that has gathered all the positive qualities from both processes. Now it’s time to know about the comfiest way to find IT engineers from European countries.

UNITEDCODE company assesses, selects, and oversees remote, niche development teams for growth-oriented companies. And even more, the company covers and controls all days off and sick days. The most pleasant part is that you do not need to worry about taxes in the countries where you will be hiring a specialist. UNITEDCODE maintains all the tax information.

And what is the difference? Let’s sum up some essentials:

  • Accompanying a candidate from the moment of search to the full start of work. It is important for the company not only to find a specialist but also to help him every step of the way before the start of cooperation.
  • Providing a guarantee at the stage of candidate selection. We will not demand payment from our clients until we are confident that all parties are satisfied with the cooperation after the conclusion of the contract.
  • Accelerated start-up process. The process of recruiting and hiring specialists takes quite a long time. But not when it comes to UNITEDCODE. The company has ties with leading vendors, who provide teams of developers in an accelerated mode to start cooperation more easily.
  • More accurate recruiting of specialists. The UNITEDCODE team is set up to find brilliant professionals even in a narrow area within a short period of time.

Another advantage of UNITEDCODE is that the team does not attract individual developers, but offers a team of specialists at once. Moreover, the team knows the starting rate of each specialist, which also gives motivation to candidates.

Now you are aware of all possible ways to find a new employee: through outsourcing company services, searches by yourself, and with UNITEDCODE company help. The last tip will be to take your time and have a deep consideration of which way is better for you. Good luck finding your engineering team!

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UNITEDCODE
UNITEDCODE

Written by UNITEDCODE

Your Trusted Partner for Top Remote Software Engineers from Europe and Latin America: https://unitedcode.net/

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