You know how to interview. You know compliance. You can evaluate soft skills, and determine whether a candidate will fit with your organization’s culture. But without a background in technology, you may find it difficult to screen candidates for technical positions.
If you don’t know the difference between Ruby on Rails and ruby-red slippers, or you think ping is a word to be followed by pong, and don’t know whether the terms dead time and delay are synonyms or antonyms, what can you do to make sure you don’t skip over highly qualified candidates, while sending others without the needed skills on to be interviewed by hiring managers?
Simply try to avoid these common mistakes:
1. Using Bad Job Descriptions
Start with a good, clearly written job description. If you don’t understand it, ask for help.
A bad job description can contain too much information — it’s a long “kitchen sink” of a list, and only a few superheroes will have all the qualifications needed to make it through a screening. Just as bad are descriptions that are too brief, or ones so general that practically every candidate will seem qualified.
If the position description is laden with acronyms you don’t understand, or concepts you can’t get your head around, don’t be afraid to ask for clarification. Spending 30 minutes or so discussing the position so you can understand its requirements is time well spent. Consider the alternative: You forward unsuitable candidates who’ll be quickly eliminated during interviews, and the position remains unfilled, wasting time and causing frustration all around. Or worse: In your screening, you pass on the perfect fit, and a competitor snaps him or her up.
2. Overlooking Errors on Resumes
Technical candidates don’t get a pass on sloppiness — and for good reason. Two of the talents that nearly 100% of technical standouts possess are precision and communications skills. If these are not apparent on a resume, then why would you expect them on the job?
Double-check resumes for exaggerated experience, too. It’s actually easier in many technical positions than in other fields. How so? Since most technologies have starting points, you can use those to verify the accuracy and veracity of resumes.
Unlike “sales and marketing,” which began when Adam took the apple from Eve, specific technologies were developed and made their way into use during known time frames. Just as you should spend time getting an understanding of the position you’re filling, you should also make sure you know how long each technology within the job description has been around. Then you’ll be able to double check candidates’ claims against the truth.
3. Always Requiring a Specific Degree or Certification
Though a candidate’s education, training, and certifications can be important (and required in some positions), it is not unusual for people in some tech fields to be self-taught or to have learned on the job. So don’t immediately reject an IT applicant simply because they don’t have a degree in computer science. Give their experience and accomplishments a look before moving on to the next resume.
Be on the lookout for candidates who demonstrate that they’re continuously learning new skills and technologies. These are the people who are not just capable of filling the positions you’re screening for now — they’re the ones who will likely acquire the skills your organization will need in the future.
4. Eliminating Candidates with Employment Gaps
Don’t eliminate candidates just because they’ve been out of or away from work for one or more stints. The economy has put many qualified job seekers in this position. If you’re concerned that their technical skills might have become rusty, consider that all technology was once new, and one of the things that makes talented technical professionals talented is their ability to quickly learn what they need to get the
job done.
5. Taking the Back Seat During Phone Screenings
Well-prepared candidates can speak confidently about themselves and how they’ll be a benefit to your organization. Give them free rein during a phone screening, and you may hang up thinking you’ve found the perfect fit just like that. After all, every single thing they said hit exactly the right notes.
Use phone screenings wisely, and take command from the start. Ask targeted questions about the specific technical skills and experience a position requires.
6. Not Asking the Right Questions
If you lack the technical experience and knowledge to develop simple screening questions for a certain position, turn to the hiring supervisor or technical team. They should be able to come up with a few basic elimination queries based on the key skills and experience needed in the position, and pass them along to you.
Make sure you also get the correct answers or a list of appropriate responses. If your questions are ones not easily answered over the phone (for instance, a sample coding problem), use email, and give candidates time limits.
You can also screen out weak candidates by asking them about basic terminology that anyone qualified for the position should know. Again, the supervising manager or technical team seeking to fill the position can prepare a list of terms or concepts, along with a list of answers, for you to refer to.
Jot down notes during the screenings indicating whether a candidate was able to respond confidently and correctly. If a candidate is offended by being asked simple questions, respond that this is merely a required step in the hiring process.
7. Not Asking for Help
If you’re not the best person to screen candidates for a certain technical position…admit it, and figure out who can assist you. If possible, involve the supervisor or the department seeking to hire from the get-go. Perhaps they can make a pass through resumes to quickly eliminate those who are clearly unqualified, thus leaving you with a list of candidates to evaluate for soft skills and other non-technical criteria.
8. Not Learning from Mistakes
Every time a candidate you green-lighted fails in an interview, find out why. If the failure was related to their technical skills, figure out what they were missing, and how you might change your screening tactics in the future. Save your organization time and money by not just bringing people on board, but by learning from those who made it past you but went no further.
Author Bio
Deepa Unadkat is a forward-thinking HR Manager specializing in Talent Acquisition, Candidate On-boarding, HR policies and practices, and Benefits Administration. She is always on the lookout for the latest trends and ideas that can improve HR operations.
Founder of Talent Acquisition Innovation and Leadership Forum on LinkedIn
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