At the moment (as I keep banging on about) there is a significant skills shortage in IT, any candidates in the market have a plethora of opportunities being banded their way and with this has come the need for a more steam-lined and inviting interview process.

When  we talk to candidates  attending interviews what we stress  is that it is the chance to sell yourself, what you have done and what you want to achieve  and make a great first impression, this also applies to companies wanting to attract great candidates, if the process is to long winded candidate can lose interest and also confidence in the company

This was highlighted when I was recently approached by a company asking me to work with  them as they had been looking for a number of months to bring on developers and hadn’t succeeded which in turn was impacting them by pushing projects back and causing costs. When I went through the job and company details they seemed to tick all of the boxes and then some, great company, growing team, bleeding edge tech, using the latest methodologies, collaborative and innovative environment, really interesting project work on offer and amazing offices but they just couldn’t get anyone on board.

So we sat down and went through their interview process which included

• a telephone interview with H
• a home coding test
• another telephone interview with one of the technical team
• an interview in the office  including a  HR competency based interview but then the technical manager doing another technical test and going through the answers for the interview
• After all of this IF they liked the candidate they would invite them back in for a final interview with a director. By this point I was exhausted just listening to the process phew.

Now it is very easy as a recruiter to just pooh pooh a process with a hand wave and dismiss this as “stupid” in the current market and just stop sending CV’s, the company wasn’t daft they knew that their interview process was slowing down the process and in some cases losing them candidates but having bad experiences in the past recruiting in panic they were nervous of cutting out any areas.

What we did was speak to everyone involved in the process and talk to them what they wanted out of the interview and working out a way to cut down the  time and also reformat the process to make it easier for candidates to attend the interview this involved

• removing the HR telephone call by ensuing we as a recruiter understood their business and was “selling them correctly”,
• the company increasing the difficulty of the home coding test
• if they pass the  coding test then it was a face to face interview in the office using their home coding test as the main point of the technical interview followed by a HR interview and making sure that the director was available should they like the potential candidate to see them then and there.

This still enabled everyone who had to be involved still was but by simply demonstrating we could be the companies first impression if you like and getting them to increase the difficulty of the home test we were  able to reduce the interview process to just  one meeting  but still give the company the confidence they needed in the candidates. Oh and yes place 2 developer’s with them.

So if you are finding that you are losing candidates be3fore you have even met them take a look at your process, it may just need some stream lining.

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