Tech Recruiters Should Get Rid of These Outdated Ways to Assess Candidates

1. Ignoring Resume

If the interview starts with asking the candidate’s years of experience in so and so technology then it implies that the recruiter has not reviewed the candidate’s resume.

That's either an insult to the candidate or shows a broken process at the recruiter's end. If the resume is to be discarded then why care to ask for one in the first place? Fix the attitude or fix the process.

2. Copy questions from the internet

A technical recruiters job is to evaluate the candidate on one of the two criteria’s,

1. Is she/he equipped with the necessary skills that the job demands?
2. Will she/he scale up to the job demands?

To answer these questions, one needs to ask questions that are relevant to the job description and relevant to the experience of the candidate. Internet is not the place to decide that. Sure one can refer to the questions posted on various blogs but do not blindly copy-paste them from the web.

3. Test Memory Over Understanding

Testing the candidate’s memory is not going to help either side.

I have interviewed junior developers who understand how certain frameworks work but do not remember certain terms by heart, more so because of the nervousness I believe but even otherwise it's not a sin to not remember method names by heart, we all use IDE’s right?

4. Counting years of experience

10 years of experience in so and so technology, if not, even a brilliant candidate is rejected.

Why exactly do those years of experience even matter? There have been hilarious instances where the number of years required for a job was more than the years the tech was available in the market.

5. Ignoring Candidates Attitude

Skill and experience can be acquired over time but the attitude of a candidate matters a lot. Is she/he eager to learn, do they like to find ways to automate redundant manual tasks, how much time have they invested to upskill themselves, do they experiment with different tech stacks other than the job requirements?

This analysis helps to identify a candidate who is passionate about the work from those who just want to do the bare minimum and go home. Now again, if “bare-minimum-attitude” is what the company is looking for, then spare other candidates who prefer deep work from the pain of working with mediocres.

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