No matter what industry you’re in, your company may need to hire a tech worker at some point. This person or team can help you scale, grow, and reach a global market beyond your current abilities, and they’ll be one of your best — and largest — investments.
So, getting the interview process right is a big deal. But if you’re new to this type of recruiting and hiring, it can be a bit intimidating. How do you know if someone has the hard and soft skills to do the job if you aren’t sure what you’re looking for?
In this blog, we’ll share the top tips to help you conduct technical interviews effectively, getting the right person hired quickly and confidently.
1. Prepare the Hiring Team For the Position
When hiring a tech person, the team that evaluates for jobs like admin and accounting candidates isn’t the one you’d use to interview for this new position. Choose a hiring team that includes current staff with expertise in engineering, software development, IT, and similar tech-related roles. With them on board, you can concentrate on the aspects of an applicant you recognize best while allowing the experts to judge the person’s proficiency in their work.
However, having experts on the team shouldn’t prevent you from understanding the tech skills necessary for the position. Before the interview, familiarize yourself with the role and the abilities that are vital for it. Discuss and agree upon how the team will objectively evaluate each candidate to eliminate hiring bias. When you have the assessment format in place before the interview, everyone uses the same rubric and criteria to judge an applicant for knowledge, experience, and suitability.
2. Weed Out the Unskilled Applicants
As you’re compiling your hiring team, the applicants are submitting resumes and waiting for their next step. For the applications that have passed electronic or manual scrutiny, this should be a tech assessment conducted online to determine if the candidate has the skills to do the job.
Depending on the position, you may want your tech team to create a coding challenge or complex problem to solve. Only the candidates who reach a particular level or passing “grade” move forward to the interview stage.
3. Determine Your Design Discussion
Candidates who make it to the interview are ready to have their skills assessed in more depth. For fair judgment, your team should have a question that determines multiple levels of problem-solving abilities, such as how the applicant would approach a complex real-world tech situation or correct a whiteboard problem that is intentionally coded with a hidden error. Some hiring teams prefer collaborative interviews in which the candidate writes code and the team observes their work.
Whichever questioning format you choose, the key is to ensure it fairly evaluates the candidates at the appropriate level for the position. If you’re looking for a senior-level hire, the questions should be more challenging. But if you’re open to training a knowledgeable but less experienced candidate, consider using different formats to judge soft skills like problem-solving and teamwork.
Streamline this questioning process by providing candidates with necessary resources well in advance of the interview. If they’ll be expected to code, give them a practice assessment or checklist of tested skills. This preparation will save you time and give candidates more confidence, reducing errors due to on-the-spot nerves.
4. Integrate Company Culture Into Questioning
Although technical interviews must gauge the knowledge of a candidate, the tech requirements aren’t the only factor that determines an ideal hire. Once the skill-based questions are over, it’s time to see if the person would fit in with your company culture.
Many tech companies recognize the essential need for diversity, ethnicity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace. Yet, not all applicants are on board with DEI practices. Partnering with diversity-focused platforms like Obsidi® ensures your applicants are both skilled and inclusive-minded, and using DEI courses during training helps, too.
However, you can minimize unnecessary conflict and turnover by including DEI-based lines of questioning in your interview. These questions reveal red flags that show warning signs that your candidate might not fit the workplace culture.
Conclusion
From tech skill challenges to culture compatibility, the technical interview is a crucial way to weed out those who aren’t fit for the job and narrow down the top candidates who are. Use these tips to create a holistic soft and hard skill approach and bring the perfect applicant into your company.
Also Read: Why On-Demand Video Interviews are Crucial for Recruiting in Today’s World
