Finding good engineering talent is always a challenge. The problem of not finding enough talented people overshadows all the other challenges like effectively filtering the incoming resumes and deploying an equally effective recruitment mechanism. As a result, most technology hirings have a bad conversion rate (1:8 or worse). This results in not only increased hiring cycle but also high cost of hiring and frustrated technical panel who have to face every candidate sent in by the recruitment team. Apart from finding good talent, here are the other challenges in hiring good technical talent.
- Bloated Resumes: The most effective way to get an interview call is to put all the keywords in the resume that one has ever heard of. Add all the technologies, frameworks and you are sure to get an invitation. Why ? because there are very few competent consultants who can differentiate between a competent candidate and a competent resume.
- Missing Checks and Balances: There are many avenues of sourcing profiles (referrals, placement consultants, direct mailers, advertisements etc) but none of these offer any kind of filtering of profiles based on competencies. Matching skill sets based on keywords is not the most efficient filtering mechanism.Alternately, options that are efficient, scalable and cost effective are difficult to find.
- Broad Technology Spectrum:With the fast moving business, the demand for newer technologies and knowledge of new frameworks make it more challenging to find candidates that have matching skills. Add to it the challenge of assessing them on these capabilities is overwhelming for the HR department of even large organizations.
- Subjective Assessment: There is a heavy subjectivity on the interview panel in deciding the fate of a candidate. An average candidate who could get rejected by a very competent panel could very well be accepted by an average panel.There is a need to introduce standardization and objectivity in the intake process.
- External Dependency: Every technical assessment today requires more competent technical person to evaluate and hence the process becomes more people dependent. The technical people are required to do technical work and they are better utilized in projects rather than assessing all the candidates who show up. Failed interviews are one of the biggest source of effort leakage of technical team members who have to participate as interviewers.
There is a strong need of a tool that can bring standardization and objectivity to assessments. A tool that introduces minimum competency level and checks candidates on their technical capabilities irrespective of the source where they come from. The tool should cut through the clutter of resumes and provide a scientific output of the candidate assessment which has a buy-in from the internal groups. This would help the recruiting teams as well as the technical panel in reaching out to the most eligible candidates.
