Tech Hiring: Use Free Google Forms to spot Red Flags before the Interview

One of the more time-intensive parts of finding good developers is intro phone calls. What if I tell you that you can weed out about half of the candidates even before the calls.

The approach I take is using Google Forms for finding any Red Flags that exclude a good portion of candidates from continuing the interviewing process. So after going through candidate resumes (yes I do it manually, tried some AI tools, but nothing worked well at this point), I send an email blast to remaining candidates with the link to google form.

Here is an example of such form:

Using this form, I can get information from candidates, that is not obvious or not included in their resume, such as:

1. Level of English
2. Years of exp in skills required for the position
3. Last time that user worked in tech required for the position
4. Will user be available in 2 weeks or 2 months
5. Is developer passionate about tech?

It is very fast and intuitive to create such form, but to help you get started even faster, here is link to editable Google Form that you can use as template (IMPORTANT: Please don’t make any changes to original form, but make a copy first. For some reason Google doesn’t allow VIEW permission on public sharing of forms, so I had to share it with Edit Permissions.):

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1eh-XSXs0F1HnGOP8bzbF7fGoDJwJOVXBZD8AiCJYseU/edit

The results are stored in Google Sheet and the next step is automating the results to automatically PASS/FAIL developers who don’t meet all the requirements.

Demo - Sr FS React Net Developer - Survey (Responses)

In conclusion, using Google Forms is a quick and free approach to screening developers, that can save a lot of time from interview process.