A Civil Engineer plays a vital role in the expansion, maintenance and overall feel of a community. Bringing one into your team will ensure that daily life in your area is the best it can be, as well as cutting the costs of huge projects and ensuring the risks posed to other workers are minimized. Due to the complexity of this role, asking the right interview questions for a Civil Engineer is essential to assess their ability.
During the hiring process, the Civil Engineer skills you should be looking for are:
- Excellent design and visualisation skills.
- Ability to see a project from ideation to completion.
- Risk assessment skills.
- Ability to accurately communicate visions and needs to a team of construction specialists.
- Strong mathematical skills and budget planning ability.
- Fluency in at least one coding language,
- Ability to troubleshoot issues quickly and effectively.
- Experience designing virtual blueprints.
Depending on the tools and software your company uses, checking their comfort level with these is a good idea too.
Interviewing a Civil Engineer
When going through the interview process with a Civil Engineer, it’s essential to check their soft skills as well as their technical skills. Therefore, we’ve put together an interview guide that covers multiple different skill sets.
It’s worth noting that in terms of civil engineering these are basic questions to be used early in the interview process, which will help you assess whether to proceed to more in-depth interview stages.
How to open the job interview
Anyone who has had a job interview before will understand that they’re a nerve-wracking experience. Therefore, it’s worth putting in a little time at the beginning of the interview to help put the candidate at ease and ensure a natural conversation flow.
This is simple to do by asking a few positive and laidback opener questions, which will set the atmosphere for the rest of the interview.