Pre-Employment Checklist for Engineering Hires

State the offer is contingent on background, license verification, and (where applicable) drug screening and fit-for-duty exam. Recruiting issues; the hiring manager and Practice Leader cc'd. Include the start-date target so downstream pacing is anchored.

Standalone FCRA disclosure document — not bundled with the offer letter or other forms. Capture the signed authorization before any consumer report is pulled. State-specific addenda (CA, NY, MA) where applicable.

Section 1 by candidate on or before first day; Section 2 by employer within 3 business days of start. E-Verify submission for federal and federal-contractor projects. Retain copies per retention rule (3 years from hire or 1 year from termination, whichever is later).

Defense, aerospace, and certain industrial projects carry ITAR or EAR access restrictions. Capture US-person status for staffing on controlled work; foreign-national hires may require deemed-export licenses before access to technical data. Coordinate with the empowered official.

Pull degree verification through the registrar or the National Student Clearinghouse. Confirm the program was ABET-EAC accredited at the time of graduation — required for PE licensure pathway in most states. Discrepancy in graduation date or degree type is a common falsification pattern.

Pull NCEES Records and the state board roster directly — do not rely on a candidate-provided wallet card. Confirm license number, status, expiration, and discipline. For PEs, check disciplinary history on the state board's enforcement page. Verify renewal is current and PDH requirements are met.

Contact prior employers' HR for dates, title, and reason for leaving. For senior-level hires claiming EOR experience, confirm the scope of sealed work with a prior supervisor — what disciplines, project types, and whether the candidate was the engineer of record or supporting staff.

Reach out to a discipline lead, a peer engineer, and a project manager from prior firms. Ask about technical depth, QA/QC discipline, behavior under deadline pressure, and ethics — code-of-ethics violations or sealing disputes surface here. Document responses for the file.

County criminal, federal criminal, national sex offender, and SSN trace through the firm's CRA. MVR for any role driving to job sites — civil and CA staff routinely drive to construction sites. Ban-the-box and state-specific lookback rules apply (CA, IL, NY).

Time-boxed exercise tied to the role: a structural candidate sizes a beam under ASCE 7 / AISC 360 load combinations; a civil candidate runs a hydrology calc in HEC-HMS or rational method; an MEP candidate sketches a single-line and sizes a transformer. Score on correctness, code citation, and engineering judgment.

Discipline Lead, a senior PE, and the hiring PM on the panel. Walk through one of the candidate's prior projects in depth — design assumptions, governing code edition, calc methodology, lessons learned. Probe for areas claimed beyond likely competence; NSPE ethics requires only practicing within competence.

Request anonymized drawings, calc packages, and specifications from prior projects. Confirm with prior employer that sharing is permitted — IP and client confidentiality often forbid it. A senior PE reviews for technical quality, drafting standards, and CSI MasterFormat spec discipline.

Match claimed proficiency against the role's tool stack — Revit, Civil 3D, MicroStation, ETABS, RAM, RISA, HEC-RAS, EPA-SWMM, AutoPIPE, Bluebeam Revu. A short live demo at the workstation distinguishes "used in school" from "production-fluent."

Construction observers, resident engineers, surveyors, and field inspectors are typically safety-sensitive — site access, OSHA exposure, driving company vehicles. Pure office design roles often are not. Designation drives whether the fit-for-duty exam and drug screen are required and what panel.

Send the candidate to the contracted clinic with the chain-of-custody form. Standard 5-panel (amphetamines, cocaine, opiates, PCP, THC) unless the project owner mandates a 10-panel. Watch state-specific marijuana protections (NY, NJ, CA, CT) that limit pre-employment THC use against the candidate.

Required for field roles with PPE, ladder work, confined spaces, or DOT-regulated driving. Functional capacity exam covers lifting, climbing, vision, hearing. ADA: medical exam only after a conditional offer; results stored separately from the personnel file.

The Medical Review Officer contacts the candidate on any non-negative result to verify lawful prescriptions before reporting the screen as positive. Recruiting and the hiring manager never see prescription details — only the MRO's final negative or non-negative determination.

Assemble license verification, education verification, employment verification, reference notes, criminal/MVR results, and drug-screen MRO disposition. HR Director adjudicates against the firm's adverse-action matrix — license-discipline findings and material misrepresentations on the application are typically dispositive.

Required by FCRA when a finding may drive a withdrawal. Send the consumer report copy and the Summary of Rights; allow at least five business days for the candidate to dispute. Do not finalize the adverse action until the dispute window closes.

Final hiring decision logged; IT provisioning ticket opened (CAD seat, ProjectWise / ACC access, Deltek timesheet, email). Hiring PM notified of confirmed start date and any project assignments. Day-1 onboarding checklist triggered.