HR Professionals Struggle to Fill Engineering Positions

In a recent survey, nearly three-fourths of human resources professionals responded that engineering jobs are the most challenging position to fill. However, when it comes to looking for candidates, HR pros may be focusing their efforts on the wrong channels.

LinkedIn ranked as the method HR professionals are most likely to use to connect with potential engineering hires, according to the survey conducted by EngineerJobs.com. The social networking site ranked slightly above the 74 percent of respodnents who said they find new engineering candidates through employee referrals. Engineers, however, rated other channels, including company specific websites and general job seeker websites, to be more useful as primary methods when they are on the hunt for jobs, according to a separate survey of more than 1,800 engineers.

EngineerJobs.com, the leading engineer job site in North America and Canada, conducted these two blind surveys last month to research the ways in which engineers look for jobs and the ways HR professionals look for those hard to find candidates.

The findings, which also show the most important criteria for engineers when considering a job offer, are below. Surprisingly, it’s not the money.

Shane Pike is president and CEO of EngineerJobs.com, the most visited engineering job site in the world. Before that, he built NursingJobs.org into one of the Web's leading job sites for nurses in just two and a half years before selling it to Internet Brands in 2008. He is a graduate of The University of Alabama. He can be reached at shanep@engineerjobs.com.