The core of every business is its people, and getting the best talents for your organization will always be the top-most priority.
Hiring just the right candidate for a position is not an easy task. Approximately three in four employers (74%) feel they’ve hired an unsuitable person for a position. In fact, 52% of recruitment professionals consider improving the quality of talent to be their top priority. Moreover, the hiring process is often time-consuming for both HR managers and potential candidates.
Companies have been integrating technical screening as a powerful hiring technique considering these problems. It helps both sides understand if they’re a perfect match.
To start with, you must know what technical screening is.
Technical screening is the process of simultaneously testing and evaluating various technical skills and experiences of potential candidates against pre-decided parameters, using theory-based questions and application-based techniques. This process works as the perfect filter between receiving an application and hiring the best candidate during the recruitment process.
Technical screening may include multiple-choice questions, simulators, and interviews to identify the hard skills of a candidate. Different ways of a technical screening may evaluate a candidate’s coding skills, understanding of core technical concepts, problem-solving abilities, and so on.
In this article, we’ll be exploring a few ways to get quality talent through technical screening.
To tailor your interviews for the highest performing candidates, rather than to weed out the less competent ones, opt for the following ways to hire better talent:
Technical Screening Assessment
A technical screening assessment before interviewing a candidate can make the hiring process more efficient. Technical screening assessments such as multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and open-ended questions can help scale the talent pool to those perfectly suitable for the job requirements. Eliminating less qualified candidates will save HR professionals substantial time and paperwork.
Technical screening assessments are solely focused on assessing a candidate’s technical abilities. These assessments deal more specifically with conceptual abilities required for the job position to be filled.
Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and open-ended questions will ensure that the candidate is competent enough with regard to knowledge-based questions. A technical screening tool can be clubbed with simulators, which is a hiring tool with a pragmatic approach.
Simulators
Simulators can work as a filter that evaluates the shortlisted candidates’ coding and other technical abilities. Simulators are more of a practical tool for hiring in technical screening as they ask the candidates to mimic real-world challenges. Thereby, simulators provide a real sense of the abilities of candidates.
A candidate can be asked to work on test cases, create an algorithm or fix a bug. There can be more such challenges given as per the job requirements. During the simulation, HR professionals notice the candidate’s problem-solving skills, how adequate their performance is for the given task(s), coding abilities in programming languages, and many more.
Once the simulation is completed, the candidate is evaluated in no time based on code quality, efficiency, correctness, scalability, and other relevant parameters. It gives a more relevant and comprehensive understanding of their coding aptitude and potential.
Technical Interview
It is essential to focus on applications relevant to the job requirements. A technical interview serves as a tool that helps hiring managers and candidates identify if they’re an ideal match. An initial interview only involves a soft skills assessment, but a technical interview can assess a candidate’s role-oriented abilities.
You can also present a task regarding a problem your organization has faced in the past. This allows the interviewer to observe the candidate’s solution-oriented approach while facing a real-world issue. Moreover, it gives the candidate a peek into what they can expect as an employee of the organization.
Take-Home Assignments
You might have already filtered out some applicants after conducting a technical assessment and a simulation or technical interview. But, you still have more to narrow down and hire the perfect person. So, at this stage, you can task the remaining candidates with a take-home assignment.
A take-home assignment would enable them to contrive at their own pace. Give them a reasonable time limit and an assignment that matches the job requirements. This would precisely determine how the candidate assessed would perform in your organization.
The Key Takeaway
Implementing technical screenings can help organizations speed up their hiring processes and, most importantly, interview the best talents in the industry. Moreover, the most qualified candidates often contribute more to the organization’s overall growth and profits. This makes it evident that hiring the right talent is crucial for an organization.
Your organization can also save time and money through the different ways of technical screening. Apart from sorting out less qualified candidates, you can also step up your hiring game using these ways. Through these ways of technical screening, you can organize and simplify candidate management and make sure you are hiring the best talents for job requirements.