Why I Still Pick Up the Phone to Engineering Candidates

There are more ways to contact candidates than there have ever been. LinkedIn messages, emails, texts, job boards and recruitment platforms all make it possible to reach somebody without ever actually speaking to them. They all have their place and I use most of them, but when I’m recruiting for a specialist engineering role, I still think there comes a point where nothing beats picking up the phone and having a proper conversation.

A CV can tell me where somebody has worked, what their job title is and, hopefully, something about the projects they’ve been involved with. What it can’t necessarily tell me is what they actually enjoy doing, why they might consider leaving their current role or what would make the next move worthwhile. That’s the information which often makes the difference between simply finding somebody who matches a specification and finding somebody who might genuinely be right for the job.

A CV Only Tells Part of the Story

Engineering CVs vary enormously. Some candidates give us six pages of detailed information about every project they’ve worked on, while others somehow manage to condense 20 years of engineering experience onto a page and a half. Neither necessarily tells me whether the person is right or wrong for a particular vacancy.

A conversation allows me to dig into the bits that matter. If somebody says they’ve worked on a particular programme, what did they actually do? Were they leading it, supporting it or involved in one small part of it? If they’ve used a particular CAD package, was that every day for five years or for a few weeks on one project? Those distinctions matter when I’m deciding whether to put somebody in front of a client.

People Don’t Always Know What They’re Looking For

One of the other reasons I like talking to candidates is that people don’t always have a perfectly defined idea of what they want next. Somebody may tell me they’re looking for more money, but after ten minutes it becomes clear that what is really frustrating them is the commute, lack of progression or the fact they’re no longer doing much actual engineering.

That changes the vacancies I might discuss with them. There is very little point persuading somebody to interview for a role offering another £3,000 a year if it recreates exactly the thing that made them want to leave their current employer in the first place. A successful placement isn’t simply about getting somebody through an interview; ideally, it’s about putting them somewhere they actually want to stay.

It Works the Other Way Too

Those conversations are also important for our clients. If I’ve spoken properly to a candidate before sending their CV, I can explain why I think they’re relevant, what they’re looking for and whether there are any potential issues we should address early. Perhaps their salary expectation is slightly above the advertised range, but their experience makes them worth a conversation. Maybe their notice period is longer than ideal, or they haven’t worked in precisely the same sector but have highly transferable experience.

I’d rather have those conversations at the beginning than discover a problem after two interviews and an offer.

Final Thought

Technology has made recruitment faster in all sorts of ways, and I’m certainly not suggesting we should go back to a world of paper CVs and Rolodexes. But recruitment is still ultimately about people, and people are considerably more complicated than the keywords on their CV.

Sometimes ten minutes on the phone tells me more about whether somebody is right for a role than ten minutes reading their LinkedIn profile ever could.




Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

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Why I Still Pick Up the Phone to Engineering Candidates
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