by Galina Divakova, Head of Marketing at YouTeam,
Initiate a recruitment process, and you will learn that vetting tech candidates is a real
challenge. You don’t want to take any chance and reject the right ones before interviewing them, but at the same time, you don’t want to shortlist a lot of them for the interview process. So, how do you move ahead?
In this article, we will provide you with the best practices, including tools and methods, to
help you pick the top tech talent. Let’s get started.
Screening The Best Tech Applicants
Naturally, you want to hire top tech talent. Here is how you can recognize the right talent
pool for your organization.
CVs/profiles
Whether you have invited applications from job candidates based on predefined eligibility
criteria or you plan to search for the best candidates on hiring portals, collecting CVs and
profiles is the first step.
A CV or profile of a tech candidate provides you with a brief and quick overview of the
candidate, including their experience. So, you guessed it right, going through the profiles of your applicants is an important step to tick off.
Here are a few things that you must focus on:
● CV format
The best tech applicants are organized, and so is their CV. You won’t want to work with people who are not organized and structured well. After all, being logically structured, well-organized, and sorted are vital qualities that every programmer/coder must have.
You can easily vet for these qualities through the CV of your applicant.
● Relevant experience
When it comes to hiring for technical space, you will agree with us that more is less. They
might be fluent in a certain coding language, but this might not be enough because your
product/service might be based on an entirely new framework and library.
While we understand that not all coders will know the language skills you are looking for,
they should be willing to learn and self-starters.
As an HR manager, you should also extract relevant information from the CTO of your
company. This will help you get acquainted with the skills that an applicant must have.
● Use AI for CV
Checking the CVs of all your candidates manually could be a tough task,
especially when you have received an overwhelming response. This is when it is highly
recommended to make use of appropriate resume screening software. A vast majority of these tools are based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. They automate and streamline the resume screening process depending on the hiring process of your company.
These tools help you identify the most suitable candidates from the lot, thus speeding up the process.
Cover letters
Although cover letters are not widely used for tech roles, you might consider asking for one when you are hiring for a junior position or when you are hiring for a role in a company with intensive competition.
In such a case, you can ask your candidates to submit a cover letter in the job
board application guidelines or company website. Here are a few things you should look for in a cover letter while vetting a tech candidate:
● What inspires them?
● How is their overall attitude?
● What are their strengths?
● What are their weak points?
● What are their future career goals?
● Are their cover letter and resume in line with each other?
Video applications
As work-from-home has emerged to be a new normal in 2020, so is hiring remotely.
Moreover, many companies prefer hiring overseas software engineers from offshore dev
shops to have access to the best talent in the industry without being restricted by the
geographical location.
In this case, a video application helps you vet job seekers based on their soft skills and overall personality.
For starters, a video application is a one-or-two minute video seen as a replacement of a
cover letter. Here, candidates use a video format to explain why they are the right fit for the position. You can also ask your candidates to showcase a relevant skillset during the video application.
Online Assessment
Another great way to gauge the capabilities of your applicants is by conducting online
assessments or skills tests. Reports have suggested that the enthusiasm of applicants for coding roles meet just 29.4% of the business request, and dev operations postings meet only about 39.6%. But this doesn’t mean that you need to hire subpar talent.
This is when online skills assessments help out the recruiters. Using an online assessment is easy. All you need to do is choose from a set of tests provided by your chosen online assessment platform. Most platforms also allow you to make your own testing criteria. Next, let your best candidates take the assessment and wait for the results.
Online skills assessment tools provide you with in-depth reports of the high performers,
allowing you to vet candidates based on various parameters. This method is not only effective but cost-efficient as well.
Hiring managers no more need to check the resumes to analyze the technical skills of the coders and programmers; instead, they can simply test them in real-time to have the best idea of what they are capable of.
Online Assessment Tools
There is a range of online skills assessment tools available that can speed up your recruiting process. We have picked the best ones for you:
● Codility
Codility is an online assessment tool that helps you screen candidates based on real-
life coding skills.
● HackerRank
HackerRank lets you hire the top talent based on the coding tests. The tool has various
products. CodeScreen allows you to evaluate the technical skills of an engineer by inviting them to participate in online coding assessments. Projects let the job candidate complete real-life project so that you can vet their project-based skills.
● CodeSignal
CodeSignal helps you vet software engineers based on coding tests and live video interviews. The tool is used by a range of companies, including Uber, Lenovo, and more.
● ChallengeRocket
This AI-based online assessment tool assesses software engineers without any human
intervention. The platform has three products – Code challenge generates an automatic
vetting test content, Creative challenge helps you discover a hidden talent, and Run a
Hackathon is an online hackathon builder that helps you attract the best talent.
● CodinGame
This gamified online assessment tool provides hands-on challenges to your candidates. The platform then ranks each of the candidates depending on their performance. The platform is used by a range of companies to hire the best tech talent, including Facebook, Deloitte, and more.
Offline Assessment
If you don’t want to rely on online skills assessment tools, worry not. You can still vet
candidates without any hassle. Here are some ideas:
● Hackathons
A hackathon brings various software engineers under a single roof to develop a new product together. If you are planning a development team, a hackathon can help you understand how well the future team goes together and if it is the right fit for your organization.
● Pair programming
Pair programming is another exciting way through which you can check the collaborative
skills of your passive candidates. In such an interview process, the software engineer and their interviewer are coding together on the same computer.
Additionally, looking at their respective Stack Overflow and Github profiles can also help
you in a specific skills assessment.
Wrap Up
Undoubtedly, vetting software engineers is tough, but you can make the talent
acquisition easier with the right techniques. Looking at their resume and CV, either manually or with the help of resume screening tools, can help you pick candidates with a similar experience. If you wish to assess the specific skills of applicants before inviting them for an interview, both online and offline assessment could serve the purpose right.
Decode the priorities of your company, and choose the top tech talent that works best for you.
So, what are your views on this? How do you vet your tech candidates? Let us know in the comments below.
