Many think they have a great recruitment process, others seem to struggle in one area or more. Today, we will look at 5 ways you can improve the process for technical hires. Even if you have a high success rate, you may find some tips to get the most out of your process.

#5 – Going over the CV before carrying out a technical interview

There are some parts to a CV that are irrelevant when hiring technical talent, or at least not as important as the candidate’s technical abilities. Looking at things like which school they went to or what interests they have may lead you to form an opinion of this person before learning about their skills. Once you know a candidate has the right skill set, then you can find out more about the person.

#4 – Having an unclear strategy to measure skills

It is quite normal for companies to have more than one person carrying out interviews. It is also common practise for management to ask engineers to devise their own sets of questions to ask in the interview. On the one hand, it shows your team members that you have faith in them. On the other hand, candidates who are interviewed by different people will not be asked a set of standardized questions. When it comes to regrouping to discuss the potential talent, you won’t have a fair assessment of the various candidates.

Some may choose to assess a candidate’s knowledge of JavaScript, which is more than just general ability. You can’t compare this candidate with another who wasn’t assessed on JavaScript.

Decide what skills need to be tested in an interview and how exactly they should be tested. This way, when the interviewers get together, they will be able to compare the results based on the same test.

#3 – Letting interviewers see other feedback before they have written their own opinions

If more than one interviewer will be conducting the interview it is because you value the opinions of each. It is incredibly easy to be swayed by someone else’s opinion before concluding your own. It is pointless sending in multiple interviews if they are all going to have the same feedback.

When using applicant-tracking systems, be sure to select the option to hide other people’s feedback. This way interviewers can’t read what someone else thinks about a candidate and unconsciously form the same opinion.

#2 – Setting open-ended take-home assessments

Some companies will set a take-home task to complete before a face-to-face interview. Candidates are provided with instructions and guidelines. If a candidate reads that the take-home assessment will take approximately two hours, it is likely to put them off before they begin, as this is a lot of time with no guarantee of a job. Some people will invest significantly more time in the hope of getting the job. When they don’t get the job, they often feel negatively towards the company.

Many of the take-home assessments are open to interpretation and therefore don’t provide a true assessment of a candidate’s skills.

#1 – Reviewing CVs as the first step of the process

We create a lot of biases while reading CVs. A CV rarely fills in all of the information we need. A CV might have all of the right qualifications on paper yet turn out to be a bad cultural fit for your office. Or worse, the qualifications aren’t as strong as other CVs but the candidate has the immense determination and high problem-solving abilities. You may reject the second candidate based on a CV and ultimately make a mistake. Focus on assessing skills rather than going on what it says on a piece of paper.