Things to look when hiring a freelance engineer

Hiring an engineer could be difficult when hiring for the first time. Engineering is a field that needs expertise and in depth knowledge. It happens most of the time that the technology you are hiring for is not the one you know in depth. In this situation it is hard to know how good your potential hire is with the technology.

But still you have to hire. In that case there are some key parameters you got to look in the character of your potential hire. These parameters would give you a fair idea that how good the candidate will be after hiring.

Ask the appropriate questions and make your decisions depending on these hiring tips:

Does he know himself?

It is almost impossible to find the one who knows everything. Even though the candidate might claim to know everything, is it possible?

Might be possible but not realistic.

Good candidate would be self aware to know exactly what he knows and what he doesn’t. It’s not about the things he knows it is about the things he needs to work on. If a person is clear about where he is lacking, it is easy to fill the gaps. The one who is clear where he needs to improve, is better than the one who claims to be perfect. A good hire is always aware about his strengths and weaknesses.

Past work evidence

Process of hiring an engineer is easy when you have evidence of past work. You can easily check the samples and figure out how strong the candidate is. Building things is good but building better things is easy when you have something to compare with. You can always expect the engineer to build something better than he built in past.

When things don’t go right

It is important to know that how your potential hire will react when things don’t go in right direction. When timelines are hard to meet, help is not available, pressure is at its highest level true metal comes out in these situations. It is good to make sure that the candidate would not give up in such situations and be patient and good enough to overcome the harsh time.

Testing these skills is not so difficult. You can take tests by giving a hard to solve work related challenge with a tight timeline and with a bad machine. It is not about if he solves the puzzle but it is more about how he deals with hard situations. Even, completing the challenge within timeline should not be the parameter to select or reject the candidate. How candidate handled the situation and overcame the challenges is the thing you should look for. Don’t check the results, check the attitude.

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Posted at - Mar 18, 2017 & Last Modified at - Mar 18, 2017