Over the last 10 years, I've had countless conversations with engineering business owners about recruitment.
Eventually, almost every conversation ends up in the same place.
"We just can't compete with the bigger companies."
Sometimes it's a global manufacturer. Sometimes a large consultancy. Sometimes a Tier 1 contractor.
The names change. The frustration doesn't.
"They can pay more than we can."
And to be fair, they're often right. A 40-person engineering business probably isn't going to outbid a multinational on salary, benefits or brand recognition.
So a lot of SMEs quietly conclude they've already lost.
I don't think that's the right conclusion.
After spending a decade speaking to engineers who win, price, design, and deliver work for a living, I don't believe most engineering SMEs have a recruitment problem. I think they have a communication problem.
The biggest selling point of your business is rarely a benefit. It's usually the way people actually experience working there - and almost nobody thinks to say that part out loud.
Engineers don't compare jobs. They compare futures.
When I speak to engineers who aren't necessarily looking to move, but are open to the right conversation, the reason they'd even consider it usually isn't "I want another £10k."
More often, it's:
"I'm not learning anymore."
"Everything's become repetitive."
"I'm a small cog in a huge organisation."
"Nobody really listens to my ideas."
"I don't know what the next step looks like."
I saw this recently with a design engineer who was weighing up an opportunity. Salary wasn't the deciding factor - the bigger question was where she could realistically be in five years. The role itself was interesting, but the future wasn't clearly communicated during the process. She couldn't picture what progression would actually look like, so ultimately decided it wasn't the right move. It was a good reminder that progression isn't something you simply tell candidates exists. They need to understand what that actually looks like.
Salary is the justification. It's rarely the reason the conversation started.
That distinction matters - because if engineers are comparing futures rather than simply comparing pay, SMEs have far more to offer than they think. It also explains why the experienced engineers who are often hardest to attract are rarely found on a job board. They aren't searching. They're usually doing well where they are - but they're open if the right conversation comes along.
Your biggest advantage probably isn't what you think it is
When I sit down with the estimators, design engineers, project managers and technical sales people inside an engineering SME - the people who actually win, price, design and deliver the work - I often leave thinking the same thing: why didn't they tell me that sooner?
Design engineers who visit site. Project engineers with genuine ownership over delivery. Directors who still sit on the same floor as the team. Decisions made in hours, not weeks. Estimators who see a job through from the quote to the win, rather than handing it off into a black box.
Those aren't small details. They're often the exact reasons someone leaves a large corporate business.
I saw this first-hand with a sales engineer I recently placed, who moved from a large corporate business into an SME. What stood out to him wasn't the role itself - it was the way the business operated. In his previous company, quotes often needed approval from two or three different people before reaching the customer. Nobody was doing anything wrong - it was simply the reality of a much larger structure - but it slowed decisions down and reduced his ownership of the process. In his new role, he could have the conversation directly, decide quickly, and see the outcome of his own work. After accepting, he also told me something that stuck with me: he knew more about the director he was joining than he'd ever known about his own director at the company he was leaving.
Yet they're rarely the first thing an employer talks about. The conversation usually starts with salary - ironically, the one area where an SME is least competitive.
The question every engineering business should be able to answer
Before you recruit, you should be able to answer this:
Why would a good engineer leave their current company to join us?
Not "why should someone apply for our vacancy." That's a different question, and most companies can already answer it. Far fewer can explain why someone should change the direction of their career to join them.
If you can't answer that clearly, candidates won't see it either.
Three questions every SME should answer before recruiting
1. Why did your best people join?
Don't guess - ask them. What made them choose you over the previous employer? Directors are often surprised by the answer. It's rarely the one they'd have given.
2. Why have they stayed?
Joining and staying are different questions. Someone might join for the role, but stay because of how decisions get made, how much ownership they've been given, or who they work alongside. That's usually the more powerful answer.
3. Why would someone leave a bigger company to join you?
This is the hardest one, and the one most businesses skip. It's also the one candidates actually want answered.
Once you have real answers to these, you'll notice they're rarely about pay or perks. They're almost always about how it feels to work there day to day.
Turn your answers into your recruitment message
Once you've answered those questions, don't let the answers stay in your head, or come out for the first time in an interview. They should shape how you advertise, how you brief recruiters, and how you speak to candidates from the very first conversation.
If your biggest advantage is autonomy, don't bury it under a list of responsibilities. If it's seeing projects through from start to finish, make that the headline, not a footnote. The things your current employees actually value should be the things future employees hear first - not the last thing they find out once they've already joined.
Candidates trust experiences more than claims
Here's the part most businesses miss entirely: the most convincing version of this story is very rarely told by the business itself.
"We're a great place to work" is a claim. Nobody's ever persuaded by it - it's what every company says.
"I got to know the team, and they're a genuinely good bunch of people" is a completely different thing. That's not a claim. That's someone else's experience, offered with nothing to gain from saying it.
That's why the strongest thing an SME can do often isn't writing a better job advert - it's letting someone else make the case. A candidate hearing directly from an engineer about what it's actually like to work there will always carry more weight than another paragraph about "great culture" and "exciting projects."
Stop trying to be the bigger company
This is where most SMEs go wrong - they try to compete on the things they can't win: salary, brand, benefits, size.
The engineers who are usually the strongest fit for an SME aren't always looking for the biggest employer. Many are looking for somewhere they can make an impact, where their opinion actually shapes decisions, where they can see the result of their work, and where their career doesn't disappear into a structure of thousands of people. That's not a consolation prize. For the right person, it's the whole appeal.
The mistake many SMEs make is assuming they're selling a job. They're not. They're selling an environment where someone can have a bigger impact on projects, decisions and the direction of the business than they ever could somewhere larger. That's the replacement for salary - not a perk, but a genuinely different kind of career.
This is why specialist recruitment matters
A good recruiter's value isn't simply knowing who's available - it's understanding why someone would genuinely consider leaving a successful career behind, and being able to communicate that honestly, not as a sales pitch, but as someone who's actually spent time with the team and can speak to what it's really like.
As an owner-led agency, that's the position we work from. We don't run high-volume searches - every search we take on gets direct, personal attention. That means understanding how the team operates, what makes the opportunity different, and why someone would realistically leave a role they're already successful in.
The engineers and technical professionals who make these projects happen aren't sitting on job boards. They're busy doing good work somewhere else. The only reason they'll consider a conversation is if someone they trust can show them a better future.
The challenge isn't convincing everyone that your business is the right choice. It's making sure the right engineers understand why it could be. That's the gap we help engineering SMEs close.
EMT Talent - specialist, owner-led recruitment for engineering SMEs and project-led businesses.
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