What we look for when we hire electrical engineers

What we look for when we hire electrical engineers
Having an exceptional design engineering department is one thing that makes Z-AXIS an exceptional contract manufacturer. We have added many people to our team over the past several years, and it has become very clear that our hiring process is a little different than you will find at most companies.

Here are five things we look for when we hire electrical engineers.

1. Technical Skills

Like every other company, we look for technical skills when we hire an electrical engineer. But unlike every other company, we understand that a resume shows only what projects an engineer has worked on—not what they actually contributed to the project.

Being engineers ourselves, how do we find things out? By running tests. Yes, we give candidates a written test as step 1 of the interview. Most candidates are surprised at this, but if they’ve actually been designing circuits they do OK. We look for circuit analysis and circuit design knowledge that any working design engineer should have, including designing an actual circuit to a set of requirements.

We’re looking for a pretty rare candidate from the pool of available electrical engineers. Even though 12,000 people earn a BS in electrical or electronics engineering every year, most of them never design anything. They become sales engineers, field applications engineers, customer support specialists, patent attorneys, program and project managers, test engineers and software developers.

Of those who do design things, the vast majority do only digital design. We do a lot of 8-bit and 16-bit embedded digital design here, but we do even more analog and power designs. We can train engineers in analog and power IF they have solid circuit design and analysis skills. A surprising number don’t.

What could be more important in an engineer than technical skills?

Here are a few of the other things we look for:

2. Customer Focus

Our engineers will talk to customers. This is so important that it’s in our strategic plan. Some customers are really shocked that we allow this, because other companies don’t want customers “bothering” the engineers.  We believe it has huge benefits for both sides.

As engineers, we like understanding where you want the product to go and what you need it to do.

As customers, you get our honest feedback. If we see a problem with your requirements or a better way to meet your end goals, we’ll tell you. We’re on your team.

Not every engineer arrives comfortable with this requirement at the outset, but most quickly warm up to it. At the interview we try to make sure they understand that if they prefer to create designs in isolation or just do what the customer asks even though they know it is off-base, this is not the place for them.

3. Collaboration Mindset

A lot of engineering candidates come to us from companies where “knowledge is power” and something they need to hoard if they want to get ahead. That doesn’t work here.

Our engineering department is VERY collaborative. Every project has multiple engineers working on it, constantly learning from one another.

That’s why our interview process involves the whole engineering team —design engineers, techs and documentation specialists.  It’s very much a two-way interview where the candidate gets to know our team and culture, and our team can assess whether they can collaborate with this person.

4. Manufacturing Focus

Every electrical engineer designs a circuit to work. But we want more than “meets specs,” we need engineers who care about testability, manufacturability, cost of materials and cost of labor.

Engineers who’ve mainly done $100 boards for million-dollar systems will have grown up where “cost doesn’t matter.” Others might feel that cost “is a purchasing problem.”

If they have this mindset, their first design review here will come as quite a shock. We look for engineers who understand (or are willing to learn) that cost and manufacturability are as important as performance specs.

The design group here is part of a team with our manufacturing group. There is a real thrill to seeing your design go through manufacturing and become a real product.

Our design engineers spend a lot of time in manufacturing over the life of the product, getting feedback on the design, developing more advanced test equipment, and working on product enhancements.  For an engineer coming from a design-only services firm, this can be a wonderful change. But if they just want to “design it and forget it,” they won’t fit here.

5. Experience

All of our engineers have experience as engineers somewhere else, either full-time or with multiple co-op experiences. We are strong supporters of the RIT co-op program, which gives new graduates at least a year of real-world experience.

When we hire co-ops, they get the same scrutiny that our full-time hires do. During the six months they are here, we can get a deep assessment of their technical skills, collaboration mindset, customer focus and manufacturing focus.

At the same time, we teach them things they won’t learn in school: analog design, power systems design, cutting open components to see how they work, and what goes on in manufacturing.

About half return to Z-AXIS for a second co-op block, and we ultimately hire about 20% of our co-ops.

The Right People in the Right Places

Ultimately, success comes from having the right people with the right talents in the right roles. With every hire, we continue to get better at identifying people for whom Z-AXIS is the right place.  And as we grow, we are finding more opportunities for cross-departmental moves and promotions that continue to strengthen our bonds between design, manufacturing and customer support.