A manufacturer that supplies high street retailers had restructured its maintenance department, moved people into other jobs and left the team short.
It wanted two specialists to rebuild it, one electrical and one mechanical.
We had already recruited the electrical engineer, and the client was pleased enough with that to ask us to find the mechanical one too.
Why it couldn't wait
Breakdowns are commonplace on a fast-moving manufacturing site, so the gap had to be filled quickly.
With the team already light on numbers, every breakdown landed on fewer people.
The restructure was the client's own decision, and it only worked once the new team was in place.
Until then, the remaining maintenance engineers were covering the missing mechanical role as well as their own.
Looking for a mechanical engineer
Most maintenance engineers at this level lean towards electrical work, or they're multi-skilled and cover a bit of everything.
Someone with real mechanical depth who can also work in a modern, fast-paced plant is hard to find.
The field is narrow before the search has even begun. An engineer who was strong on the electrical side wouldn't have solved the client's problem, because it already had one.
A multi-skilled engineer can look right on a CV, but the client already had its electrical specialist. It needed a mechanical one.
Our engineering recruitment team treated it as a needle in a haystack search from the first day.
Adverts, replies and interviews
We ran several versions of the advert and replied quickly to everyone who got in touch, because competition for engineers like this is intense.
A slow reply can mean losing a good one to another employer.
In the interviews we needed to find out fast whether someone had a genuine mechanical background.
We already knew the client from the electrical hire, so we knew what it expected from the team.
Asking the right technical questions early meant we could rule people in or out quickly.
Offered in under four weeks
From the start of the search to an offer took less than four weeks.
The engineer has just started, and early reports from the client are promising.
Speed mattered, because the restructure had left the team short and the client wanted it resolved as soon as possible.
Now the maintenance team has a mechanical specialist alongside the electrical one.
The engineers who had been covering the gap have a colleague to share it with.
Knowing what to look for is what made it work. Most engineers at this level lean electrical or turn out to be multi-skilled, so we knew where to look and what to check at interview.
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