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One thing you learn very quickly in engineering is that projects rarely go exactly to plan. On paper, everything looks clear. Timelines are mapped out, resources are allocated, and the path from start to finish feels well defined. But once things get moving, reality has a habit of getting in the way. Priorities shift, challenges emerge, and what looked straightforward at the outset becomes far more complex.

That’s just the nature of engineering, and it’s something I think often gets overlooked when it comes to hiring.

It’s rarely about volume

If you ask most engineering hiring managers what they want from a recruitment partner, the answer is usually quite simple — they want the right person, at the right time, with the least amount of disruption to the programme.

What they don’t tend to ask for is volume.

In fact, too many CVs often creates more work rather than less. Time gets pulled away from delivery, decisions become harder rather than easier, and the process slows down rather than speeds up.

What most hiring managers are really looking for is a small number of well-considered options that genuinely fit the requirement, both technically and in terms of how the individual will operate within the team.

One of the things that always stands out to me at Le Mans is how much of what actually matters… you don’t really see unless you’re looking for it.

From the outside, it’s easy to focus on the cars, the lap times, and the headline performance. But if you spend any time trackside, you start to notice something else entirely. It’s the way the teams operate behind the scenes. The coordination, the communication, the small decisions being made constantly to keep everything moving.

A noticeable shift in contractor priorities

For a long time, contract work in engineering was often associated with flexibility above all else. Shorter engagements, quick transitions between projects, and the ability to move where the work was most interesting or best paid.

That hasn’t disappeared entirely, but there has been a noticeable shift in recent years — particularly at the higher end of the market.

More contractors are now looking for longer-term opportunities, even when they still choose to remain in contract roles rather than move into permanent positions. It’s not about giving up flexibility, but about finding a better balance between movement and stability.

I’ve always found Le Mans more interesting than Formula 1. Not because it’s more exciting on the surface, but because of what it represents from an engineering point of view.

Formula 1 is about speed, iteration and marginal gains. Le Mans is something different entirely. It’s about endurance, reliability, and systems that have to perform consistently over a sustained period, under pressure, with very little room for error. And from where I sit now, working with engineering teams across automotive and high-performance sectors, that difference is more relevant than most people realise.

When speed becomes the strategy

In most engineering environments, hiring starts with a genuine need. A deadline is approaching, a key phase is about to begin, or a gap has appeared that needs to be filled quickly. The intention is always the same — keep the programme moving and avoid unnecessary delay.

But in some cases, speed stops being the response to a problem and starts becoming the strategy itself. Roles are filled quickly, decisions are made under pressure, and the focus shifts to immediate availability rather than long-term fit.

On the surface, that can feel like progress. The role is covered, the pressure eases, and the project continues. But it doesn’t always take long for cracks to start appearing.

One of the most common things I hear from hiring managers at the moment is that there’s a “talent shortage”.

Good engineers are hard to find. The market is tight. Candidates are difficult to secure.

And to a point, that’s true.

But having worked in engineering before moving into recruitment—and now working closely with teams across automotive and high-performance sectors—I don’t think that’s the real issue.

There’s a lot of pressure in engineering businesses right now to move faster on hiring.

Projects are tight. Deadlines are tighter. And when a critical role opens up, the instinct is often to speed things up—shorten the process, skip stages, and get someone in the door as quickly as possible.

On the surface, that makes sense.

But in reality, we’re seeing more businesses run into problems not because they moved too slowly… but because they moved too quickly.

We’re really pleased to welcome Rebekah French to the ASL Technical team as we continue to grow our specialist engineering recruitment offering.

Rebekah joins us with a strong track record in technical recruitment, and from the moment we started speaking it was clear she shares the same values that underpin how we work — honesty, quality, and genuinely understanding the industries we support.

I watch a lot of Formula 1.

And not for the reasons most people do.

I’m far more interested in what’s happening behind the scenes than I am in who’s standing on the podium. Because if you’ve ever worked in engineering, you quickly realise that performance is rarely about the headline name—it’s about everything underneath it.

The pressure to move quickly

In most engineering environments, hiring rarely happens in a calm, controlled way. It tends to be driven by need. A project ramps up, a gap appears, timelines tighten, and suddenly the priority becomes getting someone in place as quickly as possible.

That pressure is completely understandable. When delivery is at stake, speed matters.

But it often creates a familiar tension — the idea that you can either move quickly or hire well, but not both.

A quiet shift is happening

Over the past few years, most conversations around contract hiring have been dominated by IR35, compliance, and how businesses adapt to it. That hasn’t gone away. But underneath that, there’s been a quieter shift — particularly in high-end engineering environments.

More organisations are starting to move back towards PAYE-based contractor models.

Not across the board, and not always deliberately. But it’s happening often enough to be noticeable. And in many cases, it’s not being driven by policy, but by what actually works in practice.

The assumption is usually complexity

In most high-end engineering environments, delays are typically put down to complexity. Tight tolerances, evolving specifications, integration challenges, supply chain disruption — all the usual suspects tend to take the blame. And to be fair, those things do cause problems. But increasingly, they’re not the reason projects are slipping. More often than not, the issue is something much simpler, and slightly less comfortable to acknowledge: the right people aren’t in place when they’re needed.

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