Engineering
Recruiters

All of our team are experienced STEM and engineering recruiters in their own right. They either specialise in engineering recruiting, have had a previous engineering sector career, or have engineering recruitment agency experience.

Each engineering recruiter has knowledge of filling STEM jobs, in science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing sectors for STEM companies. That means we are an engineering recruitment agency that’s aware of the key recruitment competencies for your sector and will be able to engage with candidates from the talent pool successfully.

On average, in SD Search we place 97% of the roles we take on, first time, every time. Occasionally, we come across jobs where there are no candidates who meet the requirements of the client or clients – for example, if you’re hiring for diversity + specific skills in a majority white or male dominated industry. In this case, we support the hiring manager to work out areas of flex in the recruiting process and get the right people for the right jobs.

For SD Embedded, we can work with, and give advice to, your internal team to improve your current success rate, or set down KPIs you’d like us to adhere to.

Approximately 40% of the jobs we take on are in the US and 60% in EMEA.

Solutions Driven is based in Scotland (near Glasgow), and we have people working across the globe. Our team are skilled in recruiting for engineering sectors and have knowledge of multiple sectors, languages, and operating in all time-zones as a trusted partner.

The 6S Process

We follow a 6S recruitment process to source and secure candidates, and a 6F methodology to get the right candidate and client fit for each position. The 6S process is our proven process and framework that guarantees the right person, with the right skills and qualifications, for the perfect role, first time. We follow 6 steps – scoping, scorecarding, sourcing, selecting, securing, and satisfying – to find the right applicants.

The 6F Methodology

The 6F Methodology looks at fit, freedom, family, fulfilment, fortune, and future priorities of candidates for a new role to ensure they’ll gel with the client company and become long-term assets to the team. At every stage and throughout the interview process, we provide support, data and intelligence that helps our clients with their current decision and assists them in planning ahead, all while helping the right candidates progress in their career.

Because we use these methods and processes throughout the entire recruitment process, we do require a high degree of buy-in from our clients, which allows us to provide our right first time guarantees for your jobs, and ensure you always get the right candidate.

The 6E Framework

For embedded projects or services, we use a six step framework that ensures success in the embedded space. Designed specifically for embedded recruitment, it provides a step by step process for guaranteeing success. Ensuring every embedded recruitment project has buy in from ourselves and the client. The 6E Framework is made up of expectation, engagement, execution, efficiency, enablement, and experience.

We are a 180 degree STEM and engineering recruitment agency, meaning our business growth team will walk you through the process of becoming a customer and signing contracts. Then they’ll arrange a meeting with your stakeholders, themselves, and your dedicated engineering recruiter, providing a thorough handover to your engineering jobs. Then your dedicated Search or Embedded recruitment consultant (or consultants) will take over.

SD Search

Our Search team are specialised in sourcing the best talent and best candidates in the engineering industry for each client organisation. They’ll be in charge of finding your new high calibre employee throughout the whole process. We’ll arrange regular check in calls with the stakeholders or your talent team to continually align your requirements, and ours. Company priorities can change throughout a process, and we want to ensure we’re always on top of that.

SD Embedded

For embedded, we will match you with a member (or multiple members) of our team with the best skills for the project you have engaged us in and can support and manage your goals.

As a specialist engineering recruitment agency, focused on results, we ask for a high level of buy-in from our clients throughout the whole process. All stakeholders will need some degree of involvement. That means taking part in a scoping call at the beginning of the process, where we discover your requirements in areas like skills and salary, and look at areas of flex if those requirements could prove difficult to meet. For example, if you’re searching for engineering professionals in a specific location, we’ll look at what the expected salaries are for that area and help you flex if your numbers don’t match that.

We then create a sample longlist and shortlist, tailored to the role and sectors, that we ask you to review and provide feedback on. After that, we’ll provide you with a long-list and a shortlist where you can choose which candidates to take to interview.

This is dependent on the type of position, the specificity of the requirements, challenges in sectors, and can also be affected by things like national holidays (looking at you, Christmas!)

SD Search

For SD Search services, it’s usually around 4-5 weeks, however this can change depending on the above. Your initial contact in the business growth team will oversee the process and will always be available if you have any questions or concerns.

SD Embedded

For embedded services, we will discuss measures of success at the beginning of the process and will agree these before beginning working together.

Being a specialist recruitment agency, the Solutions Driven team takes the time to ensure all collateral we use is on-brand for your business and represents who you are and the service or product you provide.

Our team also works to embody your business’s core values throughout the process, treating candidates how your own team would treat them and ensuring even rejected candidates leave with a positive impression. After all, while they might not be the right person now, they could well be your perfect employee in 6 months when they’ve had some more development.

We offer a 12-month guarantee on all roles in SD Search, much longer than most other engineering recruitment agencies. This means that if your new employee doesn’t work out, we’ll refill that role for free within their first year. With a 97% success rate on Search roles, we rarely ever have to refill roles though – it’s why our guarantee is much longer than most of our peers.

In SD Embedded, we will discuss measures of success at the beginning of the project and sign these off before we begin working together.

Yes. In fact, we’ve recently formalised our embedded service and have launched two seperate services: SD Embedded and SD Search, making us one of the engineering recruitment agencies to offer a dedicated embedded solution.

The last year has been one of ups and downs, and many organisations slimmed down their talent acquisition teams to cope with the business downturn. Now we’re opening back up and everyone needs to ramp and find talented engineering professionals quickly. But they don’t have the capacity to deal with it.

However, lots of businesses don’t need an RPO to be embedded in their business long-term. So we offer a fixed-term embedded service that allows companies to flex their talent acquisition power with an experienced recruiter/s. Get in touch with us to discuss options for this service which can range from specific advice on a project to full spectrum recruiting.

You can see what both our clients and the candidates we have placed in a position have to say about our skills right here. We’ve worked across multiple sectors in the last 20+ years and many of our business comes from referrals through happy customers.

Additionally, 89% of our clients return to us to fill other roles after our first placement, making us one of the market leading engineering recruitment agencies. (And of the others who don’t, it’s usually because they’ve built up their own internal team to increase capacity.) Candidates frequently mention their recruiter by name because they support them with a great experience, whether they’re hired or not.

RPI is Recruitment Process Intelligence – the new way to guarantee recruitment results for recruitment agencies and internal recruitment specialists, backed by proven processes and real intelligence instead of false promises. There are 6 principles of Recruitment Process Intelligence:

1. Human powered processes to find, engage and attract your ideal candidate.

2. Full accountability and measurement from the outset.

3. Measured on results, not false promises.

4. Use of real-time data to drive continuous improvement.

5. Blending the science of recruitment with the art of engagement.

6. We love being the silent partner

Solutions Driven has been working in the recruitment space for 20+ years. Our founder, Walter Speirs, started the company after becoming frustrated with the way recruitment companies he worked with as a client in his VP position worked.

Since then, Solutions Driven has worked on every type of role imaginable, including all types of engineering jobs, on every continent across the world.

We have two offerings at Solutions Driven, SD Search and SD Embedded.

SD Search

In SD Search we support on business critical or niche roles. That means we mainly place candidates in complicated positions that are vital for business growth, or roles in c-suite or executive positions.

Our main focus is STEM recruitment, finding great people in science, technology, engineering and manufacturing, particularly unearthing talented engineers for companies. We’ve worked across renewable energy, automotive, structural engineering, electrical engineering, oil and gas, on finding industrial engineers, and much much more. We also do executive search and have hired up to director and CEO level.

SD Embedded

In SD Embedded, we offer longer-term embedded recruitment services for engineering companies, tailored to your business needs. That could be working with your team in development and implementation of a new diversity strategy, full end-to-end resourcing for an entire department, or assisting a client with launching in a new location.