What is the first quality you look at while hiring an estimator for your contracting or estimating services business? His degrees, his extra curricular activities, his academic performance or his interests. Although there is merit in looking at all these tidbits of information, I suggest trying to assess his attitude.

Attitude is by far the single most important ingredient in how good an estimator is. Why? Isn’t skill more important? Well, look at the nature of estimating work. It isn’t exactly the most creative job on the planet nor does it require an MIT degree to be good at. If your hiring is limited to engineers then its time you review your hiring policies.

Estimating requires patience, persistence, concentration and above all motivation which can only come if you enjoy your job. In my experience good estimators have all these qualities and enjoy the challenge of being accurate and detailed and hate committing mistakes. Because essentially estimating is about accuracy. It is as much about repetitive tasks as it is about keeping your wits about you to notice any mistakes or anomalies in the design (or in your own work).

So do I recommend hiring a high school dropout with the right attitude over a A grade electrical engineer who hasn’t? Absolutely! The skill required can be learnt. True, you might have to train the guy for a fortnight longer and have a proper training process in place (which you should have anyway), but look a bit farther and the picture becomes rosy.

The question then becomes, how do you judge a persons attitude in an interview? This is as difficult as it sounds. Frankly speaking it is impossible to judge the character and attitude of a person in the short span of an interview (Indeed, I still keep surprising myself). In my experience the interview process is only good enough for sifting the very obvious cases only and even then not always. Still its better than nothing.

The trick is to ask people ‘why’ they did stuff, rather than ‘what’ they did. It will tell you the thought process of the person. When you hire an estimator, unless he has relevant experience you’re going to give a loss on him at the start. He will require training and supervision and still commit mistakes that you’ll need to check. If by the time he is ready to deliver he moves to another organization for a few dollars more then you’re in a fix.

So, the most important question you have to ask yourself is – “Is this person going to stick with me for at least a few years?”, and not go running off for a few dollars or some other common reason (location, set up his own business etc.). The second question is whether this person has the right attitude for estimating. However, this in my opinion is usually answered after you’ve seen the guy work. You might look for the quality of persistence in a person but people are usually persistent when they are motivated. So look for motivation. This motivation may be financial or otherwise. A guy from a lesser known college usually has more to prove.

The knack of recognizing if someone is suitable for the job will only come with experience. But not if you go through the motions in the process. You must constantly evaluate your hiring results and methods.