If your service engineering job search starts to feel like a marathon with no end, you’re not alone. In 2025, hiring timelines are stretching, with some estimates suggesting it takes up to 6 months to find a role. There are various reasons for this.
Companies are reluctant to hire when they’re not sure what the future of work will look like. AI is reshaping roles and responsibilities, new challenges are emerging constantly, and even the workplace is changing, with new versions of hybrid work.
In addition, the World Economic Forum highlights that skill necessities are shifting, with around 40% of the skills companies screen for today set to be obsolete by 2030. When companies do decide what they need, the competition for roles is fierce, meaning business leaders often have more applications to sort through and interviews to schedule than ever before.
While AI and automation can help streamline hiring cycles to some extent, many companies face major delays, directly impacting you as a candidate.
The challenge? Staying proactive and motivated during long periods of silence and uncertainty.
Understanding Current Hiring Timelines
On average, service engineering candidates can expect to spend between 3 and 6 months just finding a relevant role, but that timeline can vary drastically. Depending on the role a company wants to fill, candidates could spend weeks sorting through applications, months arranging pre-screening interviews, and even longer analysing skill tests.
Certain industries experience even longer timelines. For instance, the energy and defence sectors have some of the most extended hiring periods, often exceeding 60 days, due to rigorous security clearances and specialised skill requirements. That means you could wait two months or more for a job offer even after an interview.
The truth is that the modern recruitment funnel has changed a lot. There are various stages involved that weren’t common in the past. After you submit an application, it might be screened by AI tools and then passed to human experts for review.
From there, there’s a first round of screening interviews, followed by skill assessments, second-round interviews, and even final interviews with panels. Every stage takes time, and as companies struggle with limited administrative support, hiring cycles naturally extend.
Maintaining Momentum: Strategies for Each Stage of the Process
When days stretch into weeks and months, it’s easy to lose motivation, feel disheartened, or feel your confidence dip. The key to success is learning how to maintain energy and momentum through each stage of the process—from application to negotiation and offer.
Application Phase: Quality Over Quantity
It often takes 10-20 applications for one job interview, regardless of your service engineering role. In certain sectors, like Professional Services, you could send dozens of applications and hear nothing back. The answer isn’t just to send out more applications.
Upgrade the quality of your submissions first. Use keywords from the job description to ensure your resume passes Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Customise each application based on the role and company you’re applying for. Look for ways to differentiate yourself from competitors by focusing on your agility, resilience, or commitment to constant development.
Interview Stage: Staying Engaged
Many engineering companies today take a multi-stage approach to interviewing. Even if you excel in the “pre-screening” phase, you must maintain enthusiasm through each subsequent stage.
To keep your energy up, reframe each interview as a two-way conversation. This isn’t just about proving yourself – it’s also your chance to evaluate the company. Come prepared with thoughtful questions that show your curiosity and give you insights into the team culture and expectations.
Prepare yourself for different interview formats with mock practice sessions with friends. Explore the differences between virtual interviews, panel-based interviews, and so on. Know how to follow up politely if you don’t hear back for a week or two after each phase. Remember, don’t pester—just check in once in a while to find out if they need help making a decision.
Assessment Phase: Showcasing Skills
Your credentials and resume can’t guarantee you a job offer anymore. Companies are switching to skills-based hiring – an approach considered up to five times more predictive of future job performance. Be prepared to show your skills in action.
Create portfolios you can share online, showcasing your accomplishments or the projects you worked on in different roles, and share them with employers. Review the core skills listed in job descriptions and seek out practice tools or platforms. If the role requires Excel modelling, build a few practice models.
Don’t forget soft skills – many employers will look at your ability to collaborate, adapt and lead, so prepare stories you can tell in interviews that showcase those skills.
Negotiation and Offer Stage: Patience and Preparation
The final stage of the job search can be frustrating. Delayed offers are increasingly common as companies finalize budgets, compare finalists, or navigate internal approvals. That doesn’t mean you’re out of the running – it just means it’s time to play the long game with clarity and confidence.
Start by doing your homework. Research market compensation for your role, factoring in location, seniority, and industry. Tools like Glassdoor, Levels, fyi, and recruiter insights can help. Prepare not just for salary, but for the total package.
When an offer is delayed, stay in contact, without being pushy. If and when an offer does arrive, don’t feel pressured to accept on the spot; be ready to negotiate if necessary.
Staying Resilient and Ready: Smart Moves
Beyond carefully preparing for every stage of the new hiring process, it also helps to have a “toolkit” in place to help maintain momentum. Here are some quick tips for success.
Stay Organised with Applications
An organised approach is crucial during an extended engineering job search. Applying here and there without a clear system quickly leads to confusion and missed opportunities.
Use tools like Trello, Notion, or Airtable to build a visual pipeline of where you’ve applied, who you’ve heard back from, and what’s next. Create reusable templates you can use for each application but remember to personalise them for each role.
Watch out for application fatigue. Don’t try to push out 50 applications in one day. Take breaks, and give your brain time to reset.
Managing Uncertainty and Anxiety
Patience might be a virtue, but it isn’t easy to maintain. The silence you experience after submitting an application or completing an interview can easily lead to nerves. Establish a daily routine and implement ways to keep your mind occupied when you’re anxious.
Look after your mental well-being, and touch base with friends and family members when you start to feel overwhelmed. Invest in your confidence. If you’re rejected for a role, don’t beat yourself up—tell yourself you’re learning from each experience.
You could even create a “win” journal to log positive progress, like callbacks, good interviews, and positive feedback from engineering leaders.
Using the Extended Timeline to Your Advantage
It might be hard to see, but there is an upside to longer hiring cycles – you have more time to level up. While waiting for an opportunity to arise, you can actively work on filling skill gaps. Find out what matters to the companies you’re targeting, like digital literacy or resilience, and invest in workshops and programs to boost your skills.
Experiment with new projects, even if that means volunteering or taking on different tasks in an existing role. Develop your personal brand on channels like LinkedIn with thought leadership content and build out your network.
Join industry groups on Slack or LinkedIn, attend webinars, and connect with like-minded individuals who can help you throughout your job search. Consider partnering with a recruitment expert who understands the current landscape, for personalised guidance and a competitive edge. They might even be able to introduce you to new opportunities you wouldn’t find elsewhere.
Know When to Move On
Sometimes, the hardest part of a long hiring process isn’t waiting – knowing when to walk away. In a slow-moving market, stepping back from any opportunity can feel risky. But sometimes, you must identify when an opportunity isn’t right for you.
Pay attention to red flags in the hiring process, such as vague answers to questions, limited feedback, or inconsistent communication. If you lose confidence in the employer and their ability to deliver a great employee experience, it’s okay to step back.
Watch out for signs that the company culture or experience isn’t suitable for you either. How a company communicates during hiring often mirrors how it operates day-to-day. Do they respect your time? Keep you informed? Offer transparency around the role and expectations?
These are strong indicators of how they treat employees, too. If something feels off now, chances are it won’t feel better once you’re on the inside.
Thriving in the New Job Market
Unfortunately, extended hiring cycles are the new normal for many [sector] professionals. They can feel exhausting, but they don’t have to drain your confidence or derail your career path.
By protecting your energy and confidence, staying organized and focused, and being ready to adapt at all times, you can consistently evolve and grow, even while you’re waiting for feedback from a potential employer.
Need some extra help? Work with a recruitment professional for unique insights into the hiring market, how you can prepare for new recruitment stages, and even access to roles you wouldn’t find anywhere else. A little help can go a long way.
All the best
Steve
At Coalesce we have been supporting engineering candidates for over 28 years; if you would to discuss how you can maintain momentum when searching for a new role due to long hiring cycles, then give us a call on 07512 821708 or email us here.