15 strategies for employers hiring candidates who are early in their science and engineering careers

There are important short- and long-term benefits for employers to hire students, recent graduates, and others early in their careers for science and engineering roles. We reached out to 15 hiring experts to get their thoughts:

• Focus on Potential with Competency-Based Assessments
• Blend Automation and Field-Level Vetting
• Implement Early Problem-Solving Tasks
• Expose New Hires to Real Factory Data
• Create Mentor Match Programs at Conferences
• Build Long-Term Relationships with Universities
• Embed in STEM Ecosystems and Learning Pathways
• Show Real-World Impact to Attract Talent
• Recruit Students Early Through Internship Programs
• Partner with Professional Societies for Diversity
• Emphasize Growth and Purpose from Day One
• Employ Tiered Skills Segmentation Model
• Combine Smart Resume Filtering with Niche Boards
• Offer Paid Project Residencies for Real Problems
• Use Hybrid Recruitment with Skills Testing Tools

Focus on Potential with Competency-Based Assessments

When hiring large numbers of early career candidates in science and engineering, the best strategy is to look beyond credentials and focus on potential. Many talented individuals are overlooked simply because they don’t have years of experience or an advanced degree yet. That’s why I recommend using competency-based assessments early in the process. These tools measure problem-solving ability, analytical thinking, and collaborative skills that truly drive success in technical roles—regardless of someone’s resume. By identifying candidates with the right core strengths, you can confidently bring in people who are ready to grow into the role, even if they’re fresh out of school or coming from a different field. This approach not only helps you hire faster and at scale, but it also builds more diverse, adaptable teams—something that’s essential in today’s rapidly evolving STEM fields.

Linda Scorzo, CEO, Hiring Indicators

Blend Automation and Field-Level Vetting

Too many companies assume a slick job ad or some AI-driven targeting will flood them with the right junior engineers, but those tools only get you partway. When we’re hiring for people who’ll actually tweak torque loop tuning or chase down EMI shielding issues, we start by pulling real-world project data into the mix. Once, we leaned on analytics to find grads who’d worked with feedback systems by digging into open-source projects and lab portfolios. 

It cut our screening time almost in half, but the first wave of hires showed a gap—lots of folks who could recite PID theory but froze when asked to quiet a noisy loop on the bench. That’s when our engineers rewrote the assessments and added a hands-on test to separate the talkers from the doers. Blending automation with field-level vetting gave us hires who could contribute from day one. Speed is great, but in motion control, trust wins—because no algorithm can tell you when the data looks perfect but the motor just doesn’t sound right.

Rene Ymzon, Marketing Manager, Advanced Motion Controls

Implement Early Problem-Solving Tasks

Never engineer the funnel more than needed. When you are hiring in volume, quit being so focused on the resume and test skills earlier. I would suggest replacing the old screening with a short, timed problem solving task- some basic data structures, logic or even debugging. It filters the fluff quickly.

We practiced this during the time we were testing junior developers and it reduced the time of reviewing by 60 percent. More to the point, it brought to life individuals who did not have finely honed resumes but had a high raw talent. Some of them are even surpassing their colleagues in the profession who possesses perfect credentials.

Automated grading, but the problems should be humanized–how an engineer would solve things, not hand-twisters. Make the bar low and the test narrow-20–30 minutes tops. When a person is going to code 8 hours a day then that is the filter. Not whether they did an internship in a brand-name company.

You will make more successful hires quicker and with less bias embedded into the process.

Mircea Dima, CTO / Software Engineer, AlgoCademy

Expose New Hires to Real Factory Data

At ACCURL, we don’t hand early-career engineers a training manual—we hand them live data from our smart factory floor. During onboarding, they’re side by side with our CNC press brakes and robotic bending systems, learning not just how they run, but how they evolve. A few months back, a group of new hires helped fine-tune our automated material handling line after AI flagged a slowdown in cycle rate. 

The system spotted the symptom, but it was one of our engineers who traced the root cause to a barely misaligned sensor bracket—a call no algorithm could’ve made. That moment stuck with me. It’s not about teaching them to use the machine—it’s about showing them how to think with it. If you want to scale talent fast, don’t hide the complexity—let them wrestle with it. The future of manufacturing isn’t hands-off. It’s human minds working with smarter tools.

Cameron Lee, CEO, ACCURL

Create Mentor Match Programs at Conferences

The recruiting challenge at tech conferences wasn’t working well until we created a ‘mentor match’ program that paired our current engineers with interested students for informal coffee chats and lab tours. This personal approach helped us connect with over 200 promising candidates last year, and many told us they chose us specifically because they felt they could see themselves growing here.

Loren Locke, Founder, Locke Immigration Law

Build Long-Term Relationships with Universities

When hiring at scale for early-career roles in science and engineering, one of the most effective strategies is to build long-term relationships with universities and technical institutions — not just show up for a career fair. Partner on real initiatives: guest lectures, mentorship programs, and collaborative student projects. This way, you’re not just seen as an employer — you are seen as part of their professional ecosystem.

Another underrated move is to design an onboarding process that feels like development, not just orientation. Early talent often cares more about growth than perks, especially Gen Z now — as they make up the majority of the early-career candidates. If you can show them a path to mastery and impact early on, they’ll stay longer and be far more engaged.

Pavlo Tkhir, CTO & Co‑Founder, Euristiq

Embed in STEM Ecosystems and Learning Pathways

One recruiting strategy that works particularly well for hiring large numbers of early-career professionals in science and engineering is embedding directly into the ecosystems where these candidates already thrive—university innovation labs, research cohorts, hackathons, and even online STEM communities. Instead of waiting for applicants to come through standard job portals, the goal is to show up where talent is actively learning, experimenting, and solving problems. That’s where genuine interest and technical depth can be observed in real time, long before a formal interview.

The other piece that makes a significant difference is aligning roles with clear learning trajectories. Early-career candidates in these fields are often not just looking for a paycheck—they’re looking for growth, challenges, and a sense of purpose. Highlighting pathways for advancement, mentorship access, and opportunities to work on meaningful projects helps the right candidates self-select. Hiring at scale becomes much easier when the value proposition speaks to what this talent pool truly cares about.

Arvind Rongala, CEO, Invensis Learning

Show Real-World Impact to Attract Talent

Marketing waterjet systems means making precision feel practical — not abstract. Engineers don’t need buzzwords; they need proof that our technology helps them cut costs and save materials, like when we helped a client reduce titanium waste by 18% through ultra-tight part nesting. That kind of real-world win connects, and I’ve found it’s the same with early-career engineers: they want to see the impact of their work, not just a job description. 

We once used AI to scan which sustainability themes performed best in our content, but what really moved the needle was a basic story — just a photo, a quote, and a behind-the-scenes look at cutting complex aerospace parts without scrap. No flash, just results. It reminded me that in technical industries, trust builds when you strip out the fluff. If you’re hiring at scale, don’t just pitch the perks — show them what they’ll help build. People who care about solving problems will see themselves in that.

Elia Guidorzi, Marketing Executive, Techni Waterjet

Recruit Students Early Through Internship Programs

One great strategy is to focus on recruiting students before they graduate and hire them as interns. If you do it right, you can bring them in early, train them up, and hire them full-time when they graduate. It is a great system.

The other obvious option is to hire entry-level engineers and H-1B visa holders. This approach comes with a cost, but due to the scarcity of qualified engineers, it is almost necessary.

Mat Merten, Owner and Principal Engineer, SIL Safe

Partner with Professional Societies for Diversity

One strategy that’s worked well for us is creating partnerships with professional societies like SWE, NSBE, and SHPE to tap into diverse talent pools early. We sponsor their conferences and host info sessions, which helped us hire over 100 entry-level engineers last year. I recommend building these relationships at least 6-12 months before your hiring needs and investing in consistent presence at their events.

Yarden Morgan, Director of Growth, Lusha

Emphasize Growth and Purpose from Day One

When I’m hiring early-career technical talent at scale, I make growth and purpose clear from the very first interaction. People want to know that the work matters and that they’ll develop skills they can use for the rest of their careers.

I like to include small, realistic exercises in the process. These exercises should reflect the actual work and can be completed quickly. This approach gives candidates a fair opportunity to demonstrate their thinking and provides both parties with a preview of what working together would feel like.

Once new hires join, I implement a tight feedback loop and pair them with a mentor who can quickly unblock them. I keep humans involved in the decision-making process for judgment calls and systematize the repetitive parts of onboarding.

This combination—human oversight, clear guardrails, and practical execution—has been a constant in my leadership style. It keeps the process transparent, the projects authentic, and the path to mastery visible from day one.

Alexander De Ridder, Co-Founder & CTO, SmythOS.com

Employ Tiered Skills Segmentation Model

For recruiting a substantial volume of early-career science and engineering talent, we employ a tiered skills segmentation model. Rather than hunt for the elusive “perfect candidate,” we classify applicants by technical fluency, niche-oriented exposure, and teachability. For example, electrical engineers who’ve tinkered with embedded systems, even if they don’t have formal internships, hit a higher retention tier. Pre-map your niche roles to skill tiers and adjust your recruiting pipeline accordingly, and you’ll cut out guesswork like soil loses water. You’re also setting up your recruits to ramp up in half the time (up to 40% of internal training metrics when applied to our own hiring campaigns).

This methodology works best as a complement to sourcing talent pools from focused university departments, hackathon winners, or GitHub contributors within your vertical. Early-career candidates excel when they’re placed in a role that’s a perfect match for them, where their skills are stretched and their current capabilities are recognized as compatible. Therefore, I would say build job descriptions and assessments that represent the REAL NEEDS at that particular skill tier and not some HR-approved template. We’ve observed a 3x higher offer acceptance rate when candidates understand why they are a good fit for a certain track and what they need to improve.

Nikolay Petrov, Chief Technology Officer | Founder, ZontSound

Combine Smart Resume Filtering with Niche Boards

To hire early-career science talent quickly, combine smart resume filtering with niche job boards.

First, filter resumes. Use simple green-light criteria, e.g., relevant skills, targeted applications, and a strong track record. Look for red flags such as candidates who have only spent a year or two in their last few jobs, or those with vague accomplishments. 

This process will save you time, and you will only take quality candidates forward!

Next, use niche job boards that are specific to your profession. Niche job boards attract talent with a passion for their profession. Additionally, there is less competition for their attention.

The right filters and platforms mean faster hires, better fits, and less wasted effort.

Zames Chew, CEO & Cofounder, Repair.sg

Offer Paid Project Residencies for Real Problems

Offer paid project residencies off the back of unsolved problems in your company. Rather than the common internships or ordinary job fairs, post three to five technical challenges and invite the early-career candidates to form small teams and present working prototypes in a two-week sprint. Pay them a lump sum salary, something transparent such as \$500 per person, and test them on how well they deliver under the actual circumstances.

We tried this on a reporting system facing the clinic. Candidates did not write job applications; they dealt with the problem at the ground level with limited guidelines and using actual data constraints. It showed who was able to construct, think on their own and act swiftly. It brought the hiring to surface. You are not sifting through resumes, you are seeing people work out your problems live.

Belle Florendo, Marketing Coordinator, RGV Direct Care

Use Hybrid Recruitment with Skills Testing Tools

From a CEO’s perspective, early-career engineering hiring means casting a wide net while staying laser-focused on quality. Using a hybrid recruitment strategy can benefit companies looking to hire early-talent.

Participate in virtual career fairs and in-person events. It builds both coverage and trust while helping you reach the right candidates.

Working with recruitment agencies also promotes talent hiring speed. Combine it with a skills testing tool, like Codility. These tools help evaluate the skills of hundreds of applicants in a short timeframe.

Using this hybrid approach, one of our clients filled 20 junior-engineer roles in under one month. It helped cut time-to-hire by 35% and also boosted hire quality by 22%.

The right mix of strategy and tech turns mass hiring into a competitive advantage.

Arjun Narayan, Founder & CEO, SalesDuo