Hiring at a senior level can feel like a completely different ball game. Especially when you need the most talented, innovative and brilliant individual to make sure that your company can continue to grow and develop.
Making the wrong decision on your new engineering director could be bad news for your company and could take a big hit on team morale and productivity.
Therefore, you need to be careful when you make your decision, to ensure you choose the best talent. Below, we discuss the key skills you need to look for in an engineering director candidate, to help you find that person with the right qualities.
Organisation
The workload of an engineering director can be extremely demanding and at times very stressful. Therefore, you need someone who is highly organised. Those who are organised will be less likely to neglect important tasks and therefore more able to balance tasks efficiently and effectively.
Hiring an organised director will mean that your employees are also more productive as they have a leader who can plan strategically and work to time limits.
After all, as a director, you could be responsible for managing many staff members and therefore need someone who can promote best practice.
Professionalism
As mentioned above, your new engineering director will be in a management position, so they will be an example for other employees. This means that you must look for a professional character who can deal with the high level of responsibility required. Employees won’t respect a leader who isn’t professional and doesn’t know how to work with staff.
Therefore, if someone is professional, they should know how to treat their employees well and when they should discipline someone. They should also know when to back off. Employees will be less inclined to work hard if they feel their boss doesn’t behave fairly or treat them with respect.
To maintain this image in your workplace, you need someone who can keep a cool and composed manner so they don’t show stress or anger. After all, you don’t want your employees to feel scared or unhappy at work because of a poor hiring choice.
Technical Understanding
It’s essential that someone knows and understands what they are managing.
You can’t expect employees to follow someone who doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about. This means that you need to look for someone who has the core STEM skills (science, technology, engineering and maths) needed at your company.
These roles can be complex and you need someone who is very experienced to make the cut. There may be difficult problems to sort out and hard decisions to make, so a good understanding of the practical fundamentals in this industry will make a big difference.
Attention to Detail
In engineering, attention to detail is an essential skill, but this applies even more so to being a director. The director will often be the person to sign off a project and when this is taking place, it’s important that everything is done to minimise risks and make sure it all goes to plan. Even the smallest mistakes could have a massive impact on the entire project and this needs to be avoided at all costs.
Hiring someone with good attention to detail will mean that projects run more smoothly and you should feel reassured that the process is being handled correctly. There should be less last minute additions and more project success overall.
Leadership
A director could be leading other managers, alongside many staff members, so looking for a candidate who has good leadership skills is essential.
A good leader should be motivational and inspire employers to want to work hard and achieve well within the company.
They should not be condescending or rude and be prepared to work with employees as a team, rather than ordering them around.
Having this positive attitude will result in employees having more respect for them and the company. This will also mean that employees are more comfortable confiding in their leader when they have problems.
All these qualities contribute towards creating a positive and motivating company culture, where employees feel supported and cared for.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinkers are able to challenge existing assumptions to come up with new methods and techniques of doing something. Alongside this, they are usually wary of generalisations, great at problem solving and can come to well-reasoned conclusions. Therefore, these skills are a must for an engineering director.
You need someone who can think about issues within your company logically, but also bring to light new ideas that you might have not considered before.
Alongside this, the engineering industry requires creative individuals for finding solutions to problems and thinking of new ways to optimise current tools. So, someone who can think this innovatively will be a great pick for your company to progress and develop.
In Summary
Look for the above skills when hiring your next engineering director. This can help you to find the most talented individual who can increase productivity in your company. While this may seem overwhelming, the senior nature of the positions means that you must find that candidate who is up to scratch and covers all the areas above.
CV-Library is the UK’s leading independent job board, advertising a range of roles and engineering positions. It also owns an array of other career sites, including Engineering Jobs.