IT Recruiting: How to Verify Candidate Skills

ITJobCafe Viewed 825 Times Viewed by 412 People

If you're looking to hire for an IT role, you'll see a lot of resumes with long lists of tech skills. We take a look at how to verify skills in IT recruiting.

More than half of America's highest-paying jobs are now in the tech industry. That's great news for Americans who are eyeing jobs in the tech field.

But, it's not so great for some IT recruiters.

Many IT recruiting specialists are inundated with resumes every time a new job posting goes live. Unfortunately, a nice chunk of the candidates who apply just don't have the skills these recruiters are looking for.

And even when candidates say they have what recruiters are looking for, verifying their technical skills is sometimes difficult.

What, then, can recruiters do to ensure that candidates are as skilled as they claim to be? Below you'll find a few of our favorite IT recruiting tricks.

Know How to Assess Candidates' Resumes

Many jobs in the tech industry are in high demand right now. As a result, some recruiters might make the mistake of rushing the hiring process.

Sadly, rushing this delicate process often entails failing to assess candidates' resumes well. That is to say, several recruiters end up making hiring decisions without knowing what exactly they're looking for.

Let's say, for instance, that a candidate has coding experience and some experience as a data analyst, whereas no other candidate does. This candidate sounds like a sure pick, right?

Wrong. The position you're hiring for might require more or less of one of these skills.

All of this to say:

The first step to assessing a candidates' skills is knowing which skills you're prioritizing at the moment.

Conduct a Technical Skills Test

Let's get real for a second:

A fair share of candidates lie on their resumes.

So once you've identified which skills you value most for the position you're hiring for, you'll need to conduct a technical skills test. This test can take whatever format is convenient for your business.

Some businesses, for example, prefer to offer coding tests. During these tests, businesses typically require candidates to write code snippets or optimize algorithms.

If, on the other hand, you're hiring for a data analyst position, you might want to test your candidates' knowledge of standard data analysis software or tools.

Ask Meaningful Interview Questions

One of the hardest things about IT recruiting--or recruiting in general--is selecting which questions you should ask your candidates. Many recruiters ask cliche questions such as:

• "Can you tell me about a time you were faced with a challenge? How did you handle it?"
• "What would you say your greatest weakness is?"

Yes, these questions are great for gauging a candidate's soft skills. But they're not going to help you gauge a candidate's technical skills.

Simply put, you have to ask questions that are specific enough to measure a candidates' technical knowledge. You can try, for instance, asking candidates about the particular details of specific processes. Doing so is the difference between asking:

1. "Are you familiar with X?"
2. "Tell me more about how you've used [insert highly particular feature] of X while on the job."

Having Trouble Developing an Effective IT Recruiting Process?

Look, we get it. You're doing the best you can to perfect your IT recruiting process. And much to you're credit, that's no easy task.

Even so, we all stumble along the way. That said, don't ever hesitate to browse the IT Job Cafe if you're ever looking to improve your recruiting process.

Comments:(0)