How to hire good engineering support staff and technicians

Engineering technicians, quality inspectors, drafters, and process techs are essential to getting anything built, tested, or shipped. But the talent pipeline for these roles is thinning fast, and most hiring processes weren't designed to evaluate what actually matters for them.

To learn more, we spoke with Doug Chappel, Vice President of Engineering & Quality at Metallizing Service Company. He shared what's making these hires so difficult and what he's learned about screening for the right people.

Engineering firms need more than the engineers alone

Every mechanical engineer, civil engineer, and electrical engineer depends on a layer of support staff to get anything built, tested, or shipped. Think engineering technicians, quality inspectors, drafters, process techs, calibration specialists. 

The specific roles vary by discipline, but the dynamic is the same. These are the people who translate engineering designs into physical reality, and right now, they're some of the hardest positions to fill.

This is a growing problem, because these jobs are a significant part of the labor market:

• Mechanical engineering technicians hold about 36,900 jobs in the U.S., with roughly 3,100 openings projected every year through 2035.
• Civil engineering technicians hold about 70,900 jobs, with roughly 6,100 annual openings.
• Electrical and electronic engineering technicians account for another 96,900 jobs, with around 8,100 annual openings.

That's over 17,000 technician openings per year across just three categories. And many of them exist because people are retiring or leaving the field, not because the occupation is growing. 

And unlike engineers, who typically need a bachelor's degree, most of these support roles require an associate's degree or a certification. While this sounds like it should make the roles easier to fill, it unfortunately doesn’t. 

Why engineering support staff is so hard to hire

According to the Dallas Fed's Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey from July 2026, 57% of manufacturers trying to hire reported that applicants lacked technical competencies. Half said applicants lacked experience, and over 53% said there simply weren't enough applicants at all. 

Those three problems stacked on top of each other make for a hiring environment where "good enough" becomes the bar. 

Chappel describes the technician market as "really pretty lean." The work can be physically demanding, noisy, and dirty, and when candidates can choose between a shop floor and a cleaner environment, a lot of them choose the cleaner environment. 

"People aren't as interested in that sort of work anymore," he says. "And finding qualified people that you can drop in immediately is the biggest challenge."

That leaves two options, neither of which is ideal. 

"We wind up unfortunately trying to poach from other companies in our industry, and that's a zero-sum game," Chappel says. "The corollary to that is that we're gonna have to train people up from nothing, and that may take six to 24 months. Then they get poached by someone else, or try to take that training elsewhere to see if they can make more."

It's a vicious cycle. You invest months training someone, lose them to a competitor, and have to start all over, with all the costs and time investments that come with it. 

The result is that many firms are running their engineering teams short-staffed, and in some cases degreed engineers end up picking up work that should be handled by technicians. That's exactly as expensive and demoralizing as it sounds for everyone.

Chappel also noted that the hiring process itself rarely surfaces the right information for these technical roles. 

The skills that make someone a good technician — like hands-on problem solving, spatial reasoning, and the ability to troubleshoot a system they've never seen before — don't always translate well on a resume. 

Chappel compares interviewing to speed dating: "You try to ask a bunch of questions. What we wind up looking for is more along the lines of whether this person seems like a cultural fit, whether they have base skills, whether they'll show up on time." 

That covers the basics, but it's not enough to tell you whether someone can actually do technical work. And when the applicant pool is already thin, the margin for a bad read is razor-thin too.

What a bad engineering technician hire actually costs

When you do hire and get it wrong, the costs compound fast. 

"You spend a lot of time and effort to hire someone," Chappel says. "Everyone is on their best behavior. Four weeks in, you realize there's a problem. Now it's a sunk cost question: do I continue to try to get the worth back, or do I move on?"

Production slows down and quality suffers. Engineers who should be designing and optimizing are instead hand-holding a technician who can't (or won’t) keep up. 

"People don't like it when someone who is supposed to be their equal isn't pulling their weight," Chappel says. Morale erodes. Your best people start doing the math on whether they should be somewhere else.

And in regulated environments like aerospace, energy, and GMP-governed manufacturing, a technician who doesn't understand what they're doing can create compliance risks that cascade.

Credentials aren't the problem — mechanical understanding is

Ask manufacturers and engineering firms what's missing in their applicant pools, and mechanical aptitude comes up fast. But what they mean by that is broader than most recruiters assume. 

It's not just knowing how to operate a specific machine or follow a set of procedures, though that matters, too. Techs also need mechanical understanding, which is the ability to reason about how physical systems behave, diagnose what's wrong, and think through cause and effect. Critical thinking with your hands.

"What jumps out is critical thinking skills, the ability to take something from beginning to end," Chappel says when asked about the skills hardest to find in techs today. "If somebody is presented with a problem, do they try to understand the basics first? How is this supposed to work? How does it actually work? What's the gap?"

He uses a manual transmission clutch as an analogy. If you don't understand what the pedal does, physically and mechanically, you'll be hard pressed to diagnose why it's slipping. The same principle applies to a thermal spray process, a CNC machine, a circuit board, or a quality inspection workflow. 

Tech across all engineering fields needs the capacity to look at a system, understand its logic, and figure out what’s not working. That’s just as true for a machine in mechanical engineering as it is for a civil engineer designing new traffic patterns. 

A generation ago, this kind of thinking was more common, especially when it comes to mechanical engineering, because they had more exposure working on cars, fixing things around the house, or even growing up on farms. 

"We don't have that basis in the population anymore," Chappel notes. "That ever-shrinking group of people who've had their hands on things, it changes who shows up in your applicant pool."

How to spot basic mechanical aptitude without a degree requirement

Here’s where hiring gets really fun. The traditional credential framework doesn't map neatly onto who actually succeeds in these roles.

Engineers typically need a bachelor's degree. Engineering technicians and technologists may need an associate's degree depending on the role in question, and in practice, many employers are flexible even on that. Community college graduates, military veterans, and career changers can all thrive in engineering support roles if they bring the right foundational abilities.

"A four-year degree carries some weight, but it won't deter me from someone who doesn't have one," says Chappel. "The best engineer I ever worked with had no degree outside of high school. He just had an incredible knack for understanding how things worked."

What Doug calls the "knack” is basic mechanical aptitude combined with intellectual curiosity and problem-solving instinct. And the knack is what actually predicts success in these roles. 

So what should recruiters look for instead? This is what Chappel recommends: 

The "so what" test. Can the candidate frame their experience in terms of impact? Not just "I operated this machine," but "I increased throughput by 50%, which saved us from purchasing a second unit." That kind of thinking, even on a resume, signals someone who connects cause to effect.

Curiosity signals. Did they research the company before the interview? Can they connect what they've done before to what you need, even if it's not an exact match? "If we're able to have those conversations," Chappel says, "that tells me a lot."

Logical troubleshooting ability. Ask them how they'd diagnose a problem. Someone with basic mechanical understanding can work through a sequence even if they've never seen your specific equipment.

How to screen for mechanical aptitude before the interview

The typical screening process for a technician role is some variation of reviewing the resume, scheduling an interview, asking a few questions, and making a gut call.

That's not enough. And it's a wildly inefficient use of engineering managers' time when you could filter for basic mechanical aptitude and critical thinking before anyone sits down in a conference room.

Chappel has firsthand experience with this. Early in his career, he went through a hiring process that included the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test, a screening tool that asks candidates to solve basic physics and spatial reasoning problems. It took 20 to 30 minutes, and it worked.

The key, Chappel says, is that the test needs to be vetted by people who actually know the industry. 

"From an engineering standpoint or an HR standpoint, it should be vetted by people who know what you're doing and the set of skills needed to accomplish it." 

A generic aptitude quiz won't tell you much. A test built around the specific mechanical reasoning, technical knowledge, and problem-solving that the role demands will.

What pre-employment skills tests can measure

Purpose-built assessment platforms exist today to solve the exact problem that firms face. 

Rather than relying on a single standardized test, platforms like eSkill let you build assessments tailored to the actual role you're hiring for. That might mean combining questions on mechanical aptitude with blueprint reading, GD&T, or specific software like AutoCAD or SolidWorks, all in one assessment.

A few things that make this practical at scale:

• 600+ subjects that include engineering, manufacturing, and skilled trades, from mechanical aptitude to electrical engineering to good manufacturing practices.
• Mix-and-match test building. Need a 20-minute screener for a mechanical engineering technician that covers spatial reasoning, measurement tools, and material properties? Pull questions across subjects and build exactly that.
• Linea AI assistant generates a custom assessment directly from a job description, which is useful when you're hiring across multiple technician roles and need to move fast.
• Customizable without starting from scratch. Adjust length, difficulty, and subject mix to match the specific role rather than forcing every technician candidate through the same generic test.

Hammering the point home

The talent pool for engineering technicians isn't going to magically refill itself. The manufacturers who hire well in this environment will be the ones who stop treating credentials as a proxy for ability, test for mechanical aptitude before the interview, and build retention structures worth sticking around for.

The good news is that the screening part is solvable. A 20-to-30-minute assessment that measures what actually matters for the role can cut your interview load, reduce bad hires, and get your engineers back to engineering.