Hiring Developers? — Here Are 5 Qualities Recruiters Should Look For!
It’s not just about aptitude, educational background and work experience anymore, recruiters and employers should look beyond that. Most folks looking to get a job in the tech industry have upped their job searching efforts, so the ball is in the recruiters court now, look beyond the facade of resumes to recognize real skills and potential to excel at the job.
TL;DR: The hiring landscape is rapidly changing and the talent community has grown so competitive that the job applicants have to go above and beyond just to get noticed by the recruiters. So, it’s time for recruiters to look beyond resumes, educational background and work experience when sourcing candidates and interviewing them.
In this story, we are going to look at the following points:
- The evolution of hiring landscape.
- FIVE traits recruiters should assess.
- Using smart tech & assessments to map technical skills.
The evolution of hiring landscape
The hiring landscape is rapidly changing and it’s high time that recruiters & job seekers adapt to the market conditions and vice-versa.
The job searching community has evolved nonetheless, since applying for jobs isn’t about creating and submitting resumes anymore.
The talent community has grown so competitive that the job applicants have to go above and beyond just to get noticed by the recruiters.
For instance, in the software industry — earlier, engineers, developers and other techies were hired through campus placements, off-campus recruitment drives, online job postings, job boards.
At times, there were situations where thousands of applicants would wait in long queues for hours just to show up for the screening process.
But now, the situation has completely changed — job applicants are building strong career-oriented portfolios, building micro-projects, solving real-world problems in order to get qualified for jobs at top tech companies.
In some cases, all of that is done just to fetch enough attention that could lead to an interview.
So, it’s time for recruiters to look beyond resumes, educational background and work experience when sourcing candidates and interviewing them.
So here’s 5 traits recruiters can look for while hiring in tech
1) Situational Awareness
This falls under the category of mindfulness as a skill, but that’s a story for another day!
- Situational awareness exists as a general concept and is used to describe an individual’s ability to actively sense the surrounding environment and act accordingly.
- Assessing this quality will help recruiters grasp the candidate’s behavior during critical situations.
Primarily, one has to look how a candidate can bond with the team and how their behavior changes based on the criticality of the situations.
For instance, the candidate may perform brilliantly when timelines of the projects are broad, but in cases where the deadlines are stretched pretty thin, will the candidate be able to perform at 100% efficiency? — If not, to what optimal level will the candidate be able to work in order to suffice for that particular situation.
2) Real-world problem solving abilities
Problem solving involves logical articulation along with imagination. It is the ability of an individual to create intelligent solutions that are sensate of real-world situations.
The brilliance of problem solvers lies in anticipation of potential future problems and willingness to perceive solutions beyond time.
Problem-solving skills are linked to numerous other qualities, such as:
- Predictive thought
- Lateral mindset
- Stable & composed mindset
- Analytical skills
- Creative thinking
- Teamwork (because great things require collective effort)
- Flexibility to innovate
- Humility
- Initiative driven
- Resilience (to experiment based on experience)
- Factor of influence (to help colleagues adapt to situations and solutions)
3) Willing to explore knowledge beyond theory
It’s all about having an open mind!
Open to trying Codejudge to make informed hiring decisions? — Talk to us!
Open mind to learn further and try to apply fresher perspectives to create new solutions for old problems.
To understand this quality, recruiters should ask candidates about their personal stories.
Not personal questions, but personal stories about what kind of problem they had solved previously and what was their mindset when coming up with a solution.
Do they stick to traditional and basic theoretical approaches OR are they open to looking beyond their own ideas, open to receiving ideas from different people.
Essentially, this will give recruiters an idea as to how technically progressive a candidate can be in terms of knowledge and skill implementation.
4) Problem-solution articulation skills
Verbal articulation, that’s distinct, is usually attributed to intelligence and extended competence.
Here’s how you can get a sense of the candidate’s articulation skills:
- Listen closely to each and every word of the candidate.
- Observe how many filler words they use.
- Check if they are able to break down a complex problem statement into simple words and notice how well they are able to translate those simple sentences into code/solution that can be understood by everyone and solves the problem too.
- However, problem-solution articulation isn’t about the fluency of their English or pronunciation of words, but the ability to clearly understand a problem and help other people understand what the core of the problem is; So that, in a team, it’ll be easier to build something when everyone’s on the same page. Same goes for the solution.
5) Patience
Patience is a virtue, and there’s a reason — it’s a tough skill to master and to become a master, you have to be a loyal student first!
It is the key to building meaningful relationships, so by noticing how patient a candidate is — we can tell if they are a good team player.
This is an important character trait that tells us how well experienced a candidate is because creating and building meaningful solutions in tech takes time, so it requires patience, and patience comes with time.
These 5 qualities have to be assessed in the most human way possible.
Whereas to calculate the technical dexterity in terms of coding and solution designing, recruiters and employers need to leverage smart tech, assessments and data to make informed decisions.
Using smart tech & assessments to map technical skills
Skill assessments that cannot simulate real-world problems will only hurt your scaleup efforts and stunt the growth cycle of the organization.
Pre-employment screening assessments play an important role in the recruitment process. It is the first step in the candidate skills interpretation procedures that help recruiters and hiring managers to understand a candidate’s foundations and scope of technical knowledge.
To know more about using real-world coding assessments to source, screen, interview & hire top developers, read this story.
Alternatively, book a demo with Codejudge and watch as we simplify the tech hiring process for you!
