Why consistency matters

The process of assessing technical candidates varies from business to business. It’s common for them to look at someone’s career history and determine they don’t have the right skills, when they haven’t even spoken to them, or their previous employer. Employers also tend to skip certain steps of the process when they have a higher confidence in someone’s ability.

But it’s important for them to follow a consistent approach with everyone. Why? Because if they run the same steps and gather multiple data points, they will build more reliable hiring data and make better hiring decisions. If they say ‘yes’ to someone, at least they can say it with confidence. So, here are a series of steps to develop a hiring process that is both objective and fair to those involved.

  1. Build rapport: Speaking to candidates at the outset will help to develop a relationship. Employers can understand more about them, beyond their written career history. A conversation will also allow someone to feel heard, engaging them in the next steps of the recruitment process.
  2. Conduct an IT skill assessment: This will be selected in the context of the role, and likely provide an indication of their relevant technical ability. The main thing is to select a test which is robust: it has enough people taking it across the world to create a proper sample size. This means employers can at least see how this person ranks alongside their peers. It’s also important to select a test an employer can interpret and understand. They can ask around among peers for recommendations.
  3. Set up interviews: Just because someone has scored 97 on a coding test, for example, doesn’t mean they will be the right fit for the team. I have seen many examples where candidates have gone to interview, with average test results, but shined with their communication and teamwork skills. The opposite is also true, of course, when technical ability masks poor soft skills; IT skill assessments don’t measure those.
  4. Speak to former employers: It’s a great opportunity to ask questions, eliminate doubts, or reconfirm instincts. A prospective employer might like a candidate but found they stumbled on a coding assessment, for example. A previous employer might confirm they didn’t always get it right but were persistent and asked good questions.