Employer Essentials – Technical interviews

Candidate sourcing is not an easy task. It is hard to find engineers and even harder to know who is a good candidate. There is no particular approach to conducting technical interviews, however, with experience and time, recruiters have realized that the best way to carry out a successful technical interview is to start off the discussion based on a technical area.

By doing so, you put a basis for debate and ask open-ended questions. By seeking the answers to open-ended questions, you can evaluate the candidate’s knowledge and command of technical skills.

Conducting good technical interviews not only aid in finding you the best potential candidate but in this way, you can also impress the candidate with challenging exercises. The recruitment process is a reflection of the company’s values and beliefs and so is the interview session. Hence, the interviewer should be well-prepared for conducting the interview.

Out of all management decisions, hiring is the most difficult one!

Hiring an employee with the “perfect fit” for the organization and the vacancy is a tedious task. It takes more than just posting a job advertisement on career portals or calling in the candidates for interviews. However, online software such as Applicant Tracking System has made the hiring process simpler and efficient.

Looking for motivated, smart individuals

Every business is looking for the best candidate to help them perform well. Every recruiter looks for highly motivated and smart people who can contribute to gaining a competitive advantage over competitors. If the recruitment process provides an excellent candidate experience, there are more chances of finding a potential competitive candidate. Thus, technical interviews should also be a part of providing a better online candidate experience.

Briefing recruiters about the requirements

While candidate sourcing relies on some factors, explaining to recruiters which technical skills you are looking for in a candidate and also the details about the project you are working on is important. This helps to make the recruitment process efficient.

Technical interviews with problem-solving exercises and in-depth programming

Technical interviews should be semi-structured such that it is more of a technical discussion where the interviewer and interviewee learn something from each other. The interview should include problem-solving exercises and in-depth programming queries to evaluate the candidate’s technical skills. Testing their collaborative problem-solving skills and asking questions from real-life situations is also a plus!

Focus of the interview should be in finding out a few important things as mentioned below:

• Where did the candidate learn the technology from
• How well he/she knows the technology
• How does he/she solve problems
• Why he/she chose a solution over the other one
• How does he/she work with people in a team
• How does he/she respond to a question he does not know the answer to

Therefore, recruiters need to work on their skills of conducting a technical interview while they are looking for best potential candidates. By keeping their focus on a few important things, they can ace the technical interview and can evaluate a developer or a programmer with much ease.