Start with the problem, not the product
Engineering is one of the hardest fields in the UK to hire for. Civil, structural, mechanical and electrical engineering roles have sat on the government's skills-shortage lists for years, good engineers are rarely looking, and the skills that matter — can this person design, price, sequence and run the work — do not show up reliably on a CV. Most hiring software was built for volume hiring in offices and warehouses, where the problem is sorting a thousand applicants. An engineering firm's problem is different: find the twenty who might be right, and prove which three are.
So before comparing products, name your own bottleneck. Is it reach — not enough applicants? Is it sorting — too many CVs and no time? Is it proof — you shortlist on paper and find out at interview that the candidate cannot do the job? Or is it the admin after the offer — references, right to work, certificates, onboarding into payroll? Each of those points at a different category of software, and buying the wrong category is the commonest mistake.
This guide covers the five categories a UK engineering firm will realistically choose from, what each does well, and the questions to ask. It is written by the founder of JobEng, which is one of the options, so the recommendation at the end is not neutral; the descriptions of the categories are meant to be.
Category one: job boards and LinkedIn
Indeed, Reed, Totaljobs, CV-Library and LinkedIn are where most UK engineering vacancies are advertised. They sell reach: an advert in front of a large audience, often with access to a CV database and sponsored placement for harder roles. For a firm whose bottleneck is simply not enough applicants, a board is the first tool to buy and usually the cheapest per applicant.
What they do not do is tell you anything about ability. Applications arrive as CVs, and the sorting and proving are left to you. Boards also optimise for applications, not for fit, so a well-written advert for a site engineer can produce a hundred responses of which a handful are relevant. Ask a board what happens after the applicant clicks apply, and the honest answer is: nothing, that is your job.
- Best for: reach when you have too few applicants
- Weak at: anything after the application arrives
- Ask: can applicants be routed straight into our assessment?
Where JobEng helps
Hire engineers on evidence — AI matching and scored technical assessments, then interviews and offers in one pipeline. JobEng is an app for UK engineering and construction, on iPhone and Android with the same account on the web. Firms use it to hire engineers and run the business side of their projects.
Category two: applicant tracking systems
An applicant tracking system — Workable, Teamtailor, Greenhouse, Pinpoint and many others — gives you a careers page, posts to several boards at once, collects applications into a pipeline, schedules interviews, stores notes and sends offer letters. For a firm drowning in e-mailed CVs and spreadsheets, an ATS is a real relief and the discipline it imposes is worth the subscription on its own.
The limitation is that an ATS tracks; it does not assess. Ranking is usually by keywords and screening questions, which is exactly how good engineers with unusual CVs get filtered out and confident writers with thin experience get through. General systems also know nothing about engineering: no notion of a chartership, a CSCS card, a design code or a site role, so you build that yourself in custom fields. And they stop at the offer; the hired engineer then has to be re-entered into HR and payroll.
- Best for: order and process when volume is the pain
- Weak at: proving ability; engineering context; life after the offer
- Ask: how does it rank candidates, and can we see why?
Category three: agency platforms and agencies themselves
Bullhorn, Vincere and similar platforms are built for recruitment agencies, not for employers. If you are an agency, that is your category and nothing in this guide changes that. If you are an employer, the equivalent decision is whether to use an agency at all. Agencies bring candidates who are not actively looking and take the sourcing work off your desk, at a fee that for engineering roles is a significant share of first-year salary.
The question to ask an agency is the same one to ask software: how do you know this candidate can do the work? A good specialist agency has met the candidate and knows the market; a poor one has run the same keyword search you could have run. Software does not replace a good agency relationship, but it can replace the part of the fee you pay for sorting rather than sourcing.
- Agency? Use an agency platform; employer? Decide whether you need an agency
- Pay agencies for sourcing passive candidates, not for sorting CVs
- Ask: what evidence of ability comes with the shortlist?
Category four: skills assessment tools
Software developers have had assessment platforms for years — timed coding tests that prove a candidate can write code before anyone interviews them. The equivalent barely exists for civil, structural, mechanical or electrical engineering. General assessment tools offer numerical and verbal reasoning and personality questionnaires, which tell you something about aptitude and nothing about whether someone can detail a connection, price a drainage run or sequence a pour.
If you can find or build engineering-specific tests, this category is where the proof comes from, and it is the piece most firms are missing. The practical difficulty is that a standalone assessment tool is another system: candidates are sent a link, results come back as a PDF, and someone has to marry them to the application in the ATS by hand. Assessment works best when it sits inside the pipeline.
- Best for: proof of ability, if the tests are engineering-specific
- Weak at: integration; generic tests prove little for engineers
- Ask: are the tasks real engineering work, and who marks them?
Category five: platforms built for engineering firms
The fifth category is small. JobEng is in it: a platform built for UK engineering and construction firms where hiring is one module of a system that also runs HR, payroll, finance, tenders, contracts, CRM, projects and compliance. In the hiring module, a firm posts a role, candidates are matched by skills, experience and location, and shortlisted candidates complete a technical assessment based on real engineering work — calculations, drawings, quantities, method and specification questions — which is checked and scored automatically. Interviews and offers run in the same pipeline, and the hired engineer becomes a team member in HR and payroll without re-entry.
The other half of the design is the candidate side. Engineers, technicians, graduates and students use the same app, free, to find UK engineering jobs by role and city with match scores, keep an ATS-scored CV and a master profile reused for every application, attach work they have already done, and take the assessments. That matters to a firm because the candidate experience is part of the employer brand, and because the matching improves as engineers add real work to their profiles.
The honest limits: JobEng launched in 2024, its audience is smaller than a national job board's, and its integration marketplace is small. It is strongest for the firm that wants hiring, people and projects on one database and is willing to be an early adopter in exchange for a system built by someone from the industry.
- Best for: direct employers who want assessment inside the pipeline, and one system after the offer
- Weak at: raw reach compared with a national board; a young product
- Ask: what happens to the engineer's record after we hire them?
Seven questions to ask before you pay
Whatever category you lean towards, put the same questions to every vendor. First, how do you rank or score candidates, and can a hiring manager see the reasons? Under UK GDPR a candidate has the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, and the Information Commissioner's Office expects employers to be able to explain how AI is used in recruitment, so a black box is a legal risk as well as a hiring one. Second, where is the data stored and who is the controller? For applicant data your firm is the controller and the vendor the processor; ask for the data processing agreement.
Third, what is the cost model — per seat, per vacancy, per hire, or per team — and what happens to the data if you leave? Fourth, is the candidate experience good on a phone, because engineers apply from site. Fifth, does it know engineering: roles, chartership, CSCS, design codes, or is everything a custom field? Sixth, what happens after the offer — does the hire flow into HR and payroll or get re-typed? Seventh, can you try it on a real vacancy before committing, with no card and nothing that renews by itself?
- Can we see why a candidate was ranked where they were?
- Who controls the data, where is it stored, and what is the exit?
- Does the hire flow into HR and payroll, or get re-entered?
A recommendation, declared interest and all
If reach is your only problem, buy a job board and stop reading. If volume is the problem and you hire many non-engineering roles, a general applicant tracking system will serve a central HR team well. If you are an agency, use an agency platform. For a UK engineering firm hiring engineers directly whose real problem is proof — knowing before the interview who can do the work — the recommendation is to put assessment inside the pipeline, and JobEng is built to do exactly that, with the rest of the firm's operations on the same database.
The cheapest way to find out is to run one vacancy through it. Register the firm with a business e-mail, post the role, let the matching and the assessment do their work, and judge the shortlist against what your current process would have produced. The first month of the full platform is free, no card is taken and nothing renews, so the experiment costs one vacancy's worth of attention and nothing else.
How to start
- Download JobEng free from the App Store (iPhone) or Google Play (Android), or open it on the web.
- Register your firm with a business e-mail — the first month of the full platform is free, no card.
- Start with: hire engineers on evidence — AI matching and scored technical assessments, then interviews and offers in one pipeline.
Download JobEng free
The whole platform for your firm, on your phone. On iPhone and Android, with the same account on the web.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best hiring software for a small UK engineering firm?
It depends on the bottleneck. For reach, a job board such as Indeed or Reed. For order, an applicant tracking system. For proof of ability before interview, a platform with engineering-specific assessment inside the pipeline — JobEng is built for that, and also runs HR, payroll and projects for the firm.
Is it legal to use AI to screen job applicants in the UK?
Yes, with conditions. Under UK GDPR candidates have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing with significant effects, and the ICO expects employers to explain how AI is used, keep a human in the decision and assess the data protection impact. Choose tools whose ranking and scoring can be explained, and keep the decision with the hiring manager.
Do I need an ATS if I use JobEng?
No. JobEng includes the pipeline an ATS provides — role, applications, matching, assessment, interviews, offers — and continues after the offer into HR and payroll. Firms that already run an ATS for non-engineering roles can keep it alongside.
How much should hiring software cost?
Models vary: per seat, per vacancy, per hire, or per team. Compare the total for a year of your actual hiring, include the cost of the tools you would still need alongside, and insist on a free trial on a real vacancy. JobEng prices per team with the whole platform included and a free first month.
JobEng is free to download on iPhone and Android. Firms can ask about a free month of the full platform.
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