How Smarter Interviews Will Win NZ's Best Engineering Talent
How Smarter Interviews Will Win NZ's Best Engineering Talent
Data demonstrates that Engineering job ads in New Zealand remained at very weak levels in early 2025, having fallen steeply over the course of 2024. New job ads in mid 2025 were still 20–30% lower than a year earlier, resulting in intense candidate competition and record applications per vacancy. But from mid‑2025 we began to see stabilisation and recovery, with month‑on‑month increases in ads, all be it off of a historically low base.
With indicators now pointing to a sustainable job market recovery during 2026, it got me to thinking about what I'd seen working well in securing the best engineering talent, as opposed to missing out on a top hire.
What worked well in 2025 and what is imperative for employers in 2026
Talent Hive achieved an 86% offer acceptance rate from engineering candidates last year. A key factor in this acceptance rate was the quality of the hiring manager interview process. When reviewing the 14% of declined offers, there was a common denominator. The lack of a robust, well-structured, interview format had led candidates to question whether the business was truly the right environment for them to excel in.
A well designed and executed interview process can be a critical lever for employers in attracting and securing talent, especially as the market for top engineers heats up. Interviews are both a "shop window" for your organisations culture as well as a structured way to identify the best performers in the market. Both attributes will contribute to hiring success as skilled engineers become both scarcer and more selective.
The Interview as a Competitive Advantage
Candidates today, especially in the engineering disciplines, cite organisational culture and career development opportunity amongst their top reasons for choosing a new employer. The interview experience is a core way that they judge both. The structure, tone, and attention to detail during interviews doesn't just assess candidates, it showcases your team's professionalism, values, and growth opportunities. A poorly run or inconsistent interview can cause top candidates to walk away with doubts, while a strong process can distinguish your business, attracting rare talent even in a competitive market.
How Great Interviews Uncover Top Performers
Over the summer break I read a great article from Lou Adler with his take on the"Universal Traits of Top Performers.” It’s clear that high achievers consistently exhibit traits like ownership, systems thinking, learning agility, influence, communication, and a growth mindset. The best interviews reveal these qualities through accomplishment based questions and persistent follow-ups that go beyond technical skills.
- Ask candidates to describe their most significant work accomplishments, then drill down: probe the challenges, their approach, people influenced, impact achieved, and what they learned.
- Target specific universal traits with direct questions: for example, “Tell us about a time you took on responsibility outside your formal role,” or, “Describe the biggest failure in your career and how you responded.”
- Top performers have patterns of excellence, multiple real examples while average candidates struggle with specifics. Use these insights to distinguish those who will add the most value to your teams.
Optimising the Interview Process in 202
- Structure, Consistency, and Feedback: Standardise your interviews with clear frameworks and rubrics, which not only reduce bias but enable consistent comparison between candidates (we have helped numerous clients this year in optimising their interviews, so do reach out if you wanted to have a chat with me around this). Provide prompt, targeted feedback to all candidates, this is a major driver of positive employer brand, especially noted on online forums and feedback we regularly get.
- Culture as a Focus: Ensure every interviewer can clearly articulate your organisation's purpose, ethos, and career development path. Authentic conversations about culture, opportunity, and values are what candidates remember.
- Continuous Improvement: Regularly review and update your interview process based on candidate feedback and outcomes to ensure you’re continuously evolving with talent market expectations.
What Are Leading Employers Doing Differently
Firms that get it right treat interviews as both a critical evaluation and a marketing opportunity. They:
- Showcase their best people in interviews, those who best communicate company values and growth stories.
- Invest in interviewer training to reduce unconscious bias and ensure a positive, professional tone.
- Align every step from scheduling and communication to the questions asked with the your unique employer brand.
- Gather structured, actionable data from every interview to guide ongoing improvements and make strategic hires.
A great interview process does much more than fill roles, it amplifies your employer brand, signals to the market that you value high performers, and ensures you are always ahead as competition for skilled staff intensifies. This is going to be the key to success as the talent market intensifies.
Just finally, please get in touch if you have any resourcing needs in the coming year, I’d be happy to catch up to discuss your plans and forecasted requirements for 2026!
All the best for 2026
Matt Love-Smith
