How to assess electrical engineering skills

How do you recruit the best electrical engineers for your company? Their profession carries a lot of responsibility, as your electrical systems and machines must be functional, effective, and legally compliant.

Plus, the skills required for electrical engineer work are varied. From interpersonal skills to highly specialist knowledge, the best candidates for your open position will showcase a broad range of abilities.

As such, you should make sure you hire a candidate with proven skills in numerous areas. Since traditional resume-based hiring cannot validate your applicants’ skills, you should include TestGorilla’s talent assessments in your recruitment process to quickly and objectively hire the best candidate.

Discover how TestGorilla can help you hire the best electrical engineers for your organization. In this article, you’ll learn which electrical engineering skills you should look out for in candidates and why they’re important. You’ll also find a collection of recommended skills tests you can use in your electrical engineering skills assessment to recruit top talent.

What’s an electrical engineering skills assessment?

An electrical engineering skills assessment is a way of evaluating candidates on their traits and skills related to electrical engineering. Administered during the recruitment process, your electrical engineering skills assessment should include tests that cover various abilities from technical competencies to soft skills.

Since electrical engineers require a lot of knowledge and competencies, an electrical engineering skills assessment should evaluate as many abilities as possible, including:

• Electricity

• Circuits

• Mathematics

• Problem solving

• Critical thinking

• Communication

• Organization

• Mechanics

• Engineering

• Construction

As a recruiter, testing for these competencies will ensure you validate a broad range of skills and source the best applicants to interview. Once you’ve established the top-performing candidates with an electrical engineering skills assessment, you can use our interview questions for electrical engineers to further evaluate their abilities.

Why are electrical engineering skills important?

Electrical engineering skills are vital for the profession. Electrical engineers need the correct set of skills to ensure they work effectively, efficiently, and legally. A knowledge of technical concepts like wiring, circuitry, and electricity will improve the quality of the process and the end result. Meanwhile, soft skills like communication also streamline projects.

Since electrical engineering skills are so important, you should test your candidates to validate their skill sets. This way, you can hire qualified electrical engineers who boost your company’s reputation, credibility, and efficiency.

Here are three reasons why your electrical engineers should possess the right skills:

1. Ensures functionality of your systems

Electrical engineering skills are essential for the functionality of your systems and devices. Strong industry knowledge and technical competencies ensure electrical engineers produce high-quality results that work effectively and as expected.

For instance, a thorough understanding and practical knowledge of circuits will help an electrical engineer correctly wire a system. This prevents malfunctions and enhances the safety of your operations, which also improves your company’s reputation and reliability. In turn, you’ll achieve higher client satisfaction, retention, and acquisition rates.

2. Reduces overall time-to-completion

Electrical engineers with the right skills can optimize the efficiency of their work processes. Comprehensive abilities in mathematics and electricity will help electrical engineers perform their duties effectively, speeding up the job and reducing the overall time needed to complete a project.

Additionally, strong communication skills can boost the overall efficiency of your company’s operations. Electrical engineers with the right active listening and expressive abilities can explain complicated instructions and terms to non-specialists with ease, ensuring full transparency of the work and streamlining the whole process.

3. Full legal compliance

Electrical engineers are responsible for ensuring the systems and devices they develop fully comply with legal regulations. There are many requirements and considerations electrical engineers must take into account when designing systems, largely regarding safety, so they must possess solid industry knowledge to ensure the end result is legal.

As a result, electrical engineering skills are essential in ensuring full legal compliance. Skilled electrical engineers will prevent potentially damaging lawsuits against your company, avoiding costly legal fees and time-consuming procedures. They will also ensure your operations are above board, which improves your brand reputation and trustworthiness.

Which skills and traits are important for electrical engineers?

Electrical engineering is a highly technical profession. The best workers exhibit a blend of hard and soft skills, drawing on extensive training and innate personality traits to operate effectively. Successful electrical engineers benefit from a broad range of skills, as this allows them to perform their duties responsibly and efficiently.

As a recruiter, you must look for candidates who demonstrate a variety of skills and traits related to electrical engineering. This could involve circuit expertise, mathematical skills, problem-solving abilities, organizational competencies, or other hard and soft skills.

If you want to hire a skilled electrical engineer, you should know what abilities to look for in your candidates. Here are six of the key skills and traits that successful electrical engineers need:

Knowledge of electricity

A deep understanding of electricity is critical for an electrical engineer. It forms the basis of everything they do, so your candidates must demonstrate a thorough knowledge of electricity and electrical principles. Electricity skills are most often learned through education, courses, and practical experience.

Electrical knowledge covers many areas, including circuits, wiring, and safety. Electrical engineers must possess a deep understanding of everything related to electricity. For instance, they must know how to design wiring systems using the right materials to ensure everything functions correctly and legally.

Mathematics

Electrical engineers frequently work with numbers and data. Voltage, current, resistance, and area are all measurements they must take and use in their daily duties. As a result, strong mathematical skills are required to ensure their electrical engineering work is accurate and effective.

While basic math skills are essential, electrical engineers should also possess advanced abilities in the subject. They frequently perform complex calculations when designing and testing electrical systems, leading to a need for strong calculus, statistics, and algebra skills.

Adept math skills also ensure the overall quality of the systems and devices electrical engineers develop. Solid abilities will reduce calculation errors and enable electrical engineers to spot problems during troubleshooting.

Problem solving

Problem-solving skills are crucial in electrical engineering. A significant part of an electrical engineer’s job involves identifying and analyzing issues with electrical circuits, systems, and devices. Solid problem-solving abilities will help them spot and repair problems with appropriate methods and solutions.

Being an electrical engineer often involves challenging work. Projects are frequently large-scale, while client briefs and expectations are rigorous. To ensure they come up with innovative ideas for new and sizable challenges, electrical engineers must have strong problem-solving abilities.

Attention to detail

To be able to spot problems and fix them accordingly, electrical engineers need a keen eye for detail. An acute awareness of small details will facilitate the testing and troubleshooting of electrical systems, as this helps electrical engineers find even minor errors.

Large-scale electrical projects require strong visual attention-to-detail skills because even a few small mistakes in the system could cause profound and damaging effects. Safety is paramount in electrical engineering, so workers must be able to identify potential issues and resolve them before they arise.

Even minor electrical faults can have serious consequences for your company. Your organization’s reputation, client retention, and client acquisition are all directly affected by the quality of your work. With a keen eye for detail, electrical engineers can enhance their quality assurance process and produce exceptional results.

Communication

Electrical engineers frequently work in tandem with others, collaborating with engineers, planners, designers, builders, and managers to produce high-quality projects and fulfill client expectations. For this reason, electrical engineers need strong communication skills to facilitate efficient and productive work.

Additionally, electrical engineering involves complex terms and technical language. If electrical engineers are able to communicate and explain specialist terminology to their colleagues, the whole operation runs more smoothly and efficiently. Therefore, strong verbal and written communication skills are very valuable in electrical engineering.

Organization

Electrical engineers work across multiple projects, use a range of tools, and interact with various people. Since the nature of the work is so varied and multi-faceted, electrical engineers must possess strong organizational skills. These may involve competencies in scheduling, prioritization, time management, leadership, and people management. 

With self-organization skills, electrical engineers can build projects safely and meet deadlines efficiently. Prioritizing tasks and planning projects is a fundamental responsibility of an electrical engineer, which is why they must be sufficiently organized.

Skills and traits tests

As a recruiter, you’ll know how difficult it can be to hire skilled candidates using only resumes and interviews. This traditional recruitment method is outdated; modern occupations require modern hiring processes. Standard resume-based hiring will not validate the skills of your candidates, and you may end up paying the price if you recruit an unskilled applicant.

To hire well-trained electrical engineers with a vast and relevant skill set, you should incorporate talent assessments into your recruitment process. Skills and traits tests give you proof of a candidate’s abilities before you offer them a position. They’re an assured way to source the best electrical engineering talent for your company.

You can include up to five skills tests in your TestGorilla talent assessment to hire skilled workers. Here are five tests we recommend using to recruit the best electrical engineers:

Fundamentals of electricity

An electrical engineer works with electricity every day. It’s a fundamental technology that’s involved in every part of their job. As a result, electrical engineers need a deep understanding of electrical principles, concepts, and mechanisms.

Our Fundamentals of electricity test can evaluate your candidates on their foundational knowledge of electricity. It covers all the basics, including circuits, electric power, and digital logic design. Candidates will be tested on their understanding of electricity and whether they can apply their knowledge to real-world scenarios.

Applicants should record high scores in this test since these skills are fundamental to electrical engineering. Including this test in your hiring process will ensure your new hires can work safely and effectively, reducing the need for extra training and expensive onboarding.

Intermediate math

Since math is a common feature of electrical engineering work, your candidates should demonstrate significant math skills. The best electrical engineers should have a more advanced understanding of mathematics and mathematical principles that goes beyond simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

Use our Intermediate math test to hire skilled electrical engineers with comprehensive math competencies. This test covers decimals, fractions, ratios, percentages, time estimates, and other advanced mathematical concepts. The best participants will demonstrate adept abilities in calculus and statistics, both of which are valuable in electrical engineering.

Structural engineering

Electrical engineers may occasionally be required to carry out activities on construction sites, such as electrical installation and surveying. To perform their duties effectively and prevent safety mishaps, they need a foundational understanding of structures, buildings, and materials.

If your organization requires electrical engineers to work on construction sites or develop electrical systems for buildings, you can use our Structural engineering test to evaluate relevant skills. It’s ideal for assessing knowledge of structural analysis, design, stability, construction techniques, and site considerations.

Mechanical reasoning

Mathematics and physics play fundamental roles in an electrical engineer’s job. Skilled workers should be familiar with mechanical concepts, forces, and machines, so they can design functional and effective electrical systems. 

An electrical engineer’s work typically involves developing electrical systems for machinery. Our Mechanical reasoning test helps you evaluate your candidates’ abilities regarding force, movement, velocity, pulleys, gears, and wheels. This ensures whoever you hire has a strong knowledge of mechanical principles and can apply them to their electrical engineering role.

Critical thinking

Electrical engineers are frequently required to identify and resolve problems in their day-to-day activities. They must possess strong critical thinking skills to produce innovative and error-free work, fulfilling client briefs and meeting expectations while working within the scope of their own budget and limitations.

TestGorilla’s Critical thinking test helps you identify which candidates possess the strongest abilities in this area. You’ll be able to evaluate applicants’ skills regarding deductive reasoning, interpreting sequences, understanding cause-and-effect relationships, and recognizing assumptions.

Electrical engineer skills assessment FAQs

If you’re looking for more information on electrical engineering skills, read through the answers to some frequently asked questions:

Which unique skills do electrical engineers need?

Many electrical engineering skills overlap with similar professions. For instance, math skills, problem-solving abilities, and communication are all required in a variety of engineering occupations. The unique skills that electrical engineers need include a solid grasp of electrical concepts, circuitry, and specific software programs like AutoDesk and Matlab.

What are the soft skills for electrical engineers?

As well as technical knowledge and a deep understanding of electricity, electrical engineers also need soft skills. These include critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, which help during the testing and troubleshooting of electrical systems. Organization, communication, time management, and attention to detail are also valuable soft skills.

What do electrical engineers do on a daily basis?

Electrical engineers are responsible for designing, developing, testing, and maintaining electrical systems and devices. Examples of these include wiring, lighting, radar systems, electric motors, communications systems, and generators. Electrical engineers need solid attention to detail and a comprehensive knowledge of their field.

How TestGorilla can help you find skilled electrical engineers

What do you do if you need to hire an electrical engineer but you’re unfamiliar with the field? Even if you yourself are proficient in electrical engineering, how do you ensure your new hires are, too? Skills-based recruitment is the best way to hire top talent.

TestGorilla’s talent assessments can make finding the best hire easy. Each test is created by an expert in the relevant field and validated by a peer review from a fellow specialist. This approach to hiring is highly effective and supported by a significant amount of scientific research.

Additionally, you’ll remove unconscious bias from your recruitment process. After your candidates have completed the test, you’ll be presented with instant results in an unbiased manner. You can pick candidates to interview from an objective list that ranks them based on skill alone, without regard for age, race, gender, or background.

You can improve your entire approach to recruitment with TestGorilla’s talent assessments. With this science-backed, unbiased recruitment method, you can reduce your overall time-to-hire by interviewing only the best candidates with a proven skill set. This way, you don’t waste time interviewing unqualified candidates, and can reduce the time it takes to fill your open positions.

Get started with TestGorilla

Recruiting electrical engineers can be difficult, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the profession. If you want to hire the best talent for your company, test your candidates before you invite them for interviews. This way, you can acquire proof of ability rather than relying on unreliable resumes and first impressions.

Using TestGorilla’s talent assessments gives you the best chance of recruiting the right person for the job. You’ll enjoy a bias-free and accelerated recruitment process, helping you source talented and qualified electrical engineers.

Try TestGorilla for free today to discover the benefits of skills-based hiring.