An integrator hires a 'PLC programmer' whose CV lists five controller brands and three industries. At his first factory acceptance test he cannot find why a transfer sequence stalls at step six. It turns out his experience was small edits to running programs inside a tyre plant's maintenance cell: forcing bits, changing timer presets, swapping a faulty card. Useful skills, but not the ability to build a sequence from a functional description.
CVs in this trade describe exposure, not capability. Firms that hire well do two things differently. They look where skilled people actually gather, and they test every candidate on a short task that mirrors the seat.
Where the capable ones tend to be
- ITI and polytechnic batches: electrician, wireman and instrumentation trades suit panel shops and test benches. Build ties with two or three institutes and their placement officers.
- Engineering colleges' electrical, instrumentation and mechatronics departments: for trainee programmers, through project guides who know which students actually built things.
- Robot dealers' and drive distributors' service teams: engineers who have commissioned many cells but want project ownership.
- Machine builders' service engineers: strong fault-finders who already travel and talk to customers.
- Former interns and boomerang alumni: people who parted amicably and already know your tag conventions; stay in touch.
- Your own engineers' contacts: they know who was good on a shared site; a modest referral reward helps.
- Specialist recruiters with a technical brief: useful for scarce seats such as safety logic or vision, if the brief and test are yours.
A note of caution on customers' maintenance staff. Hiring from a customer can damage the account. Many firms agree with key customers that neither side approaches the other's people directly.
Write the brief before searching
Search starts with a written account of what the person must deliver alone, the platforms that are must-have, and how the year splits between desk and site. Without that, recruiters and referrers send whoever matches keywords. Our guide on describing skill rather than tasks in automation roles shows how.
Phone-screen questions that sort keyword CVs
- Programmer: how would you stop a conveyor restarting by itself after a power dip?
- Wireman: why must a ferrule number match at both ends of a core, and what happens when it does not?
- SCADA candidate: what happens to historian records when the link to an outstation drops for an hour?
- Robot programmer: what goes wrong when the payload is set lighter than the real gripper and part?
- Vision candidate: why would a backlight suit edge measurement better than a ring light?
Each takes a minute to answer. Someone who has done the work answers with a story; someone who has only read about it answers with a definition.
Practical tests by seat
- Panel wireman: wire a star-delta starter on a test board from a schematic, with ferrules and labels, against the clock. Judge neatness, accuracy and drawing reading.
- Panel tester: find three planted faults on a small panel with a meter and the drawing, and explain the method.
- Controls programmer: on a simulator, program a two-cylinder pick-and-place with a jam alarm and a manual mode. Then read a printout of buggy rungs and spot the faults.
- Robot programmer: in simulation, teach a pick path, set the tool frame and payload, and describe a recovery routine after a dropped part.
- Vision application engineer: choose lighting and lens for a shiny bottle cap from a few options, and explain why a threshold drifts across a shift.
- SCADA engineer: given an extract of an I/O schedule, propose tag names, alarm priorities and logging rates.
- Commissioning or service engineer: a fault-finding scenario plus a role-play in which a furious shift manager demands the conveyor restarted before lunch.
Keep each test under about ninety minutes, run it on de-energised or extra-low-voltage kit, and score it on a written rubric agreed in advance.
Running the hiring sequence
- 1
Phone screen with three technical questions
Short, specific questions tied to the seat, asked by an engineer. It filters keyword CVs in fifteen minutes.
- 2
Practical test
The seat's exercise, observed by the person who would lead the candidate. Note how they approach a problem as well as the result.
- 3
Structured interview with a scorecard
Identical questions for each candidate, scored separately by two interviewers. Adapt our downloadable scorecard layout.
- 4
Site temperament check
For travelling roles, the role-play plus a question about their toughest posting and how they kept going once the first week's enthusiasm wore off.
- 5
Decide inside a week
Scarce candidates hold more than one offer. A slow decision is how most scarce candidates slip away.
- 6
Keep warm through notice
Long notice periods are normal. A call every fortnight and an early invite to meet the team reduce dropouts before joining.
Mistakes that cost good hires
- Hiring on the number of brands listed instead of on what the candidate built.
- Skipping the test for senior candidates, who are often the ones whose CVs mislead most.
- Interviews run differently by each manager, so candidates cannot be compared.
- Offers that take weeks while the candidate's notice clock runs elsewhere.
- Silence between offer and joining day, which invites a counter-offer from the current employer.
Getting help with the process
Hiring does not end at the offer; sensor makers, for instance, put new assemblers on practice boards first, as their onboarding guidance describes. Vision firms, with small teams of deep specialists, feel a bad hire most; their recruitment page covers their case. Our piece on scored, structured interviewing explains why it beats chat. The gap during notice periods is covered in why accepted offers end in no-shows. GullyHR's recruitment process consulting designs briefs, tests and scorecards with your leads, and our search and sourcing team can run the hunt. Wider sector patterns live on our integrator and machine-builder hub.
