Episode 4: Why Tech Hiring Based On Skills Should Be Your #1 Priority ft. Stranger Things

This post has been updated on October 19th, 2022.

Welcome to the last episode of #NetflixandHire! Over the last couple of episodes, we’ve learned that sometimes what you see is not what you get, why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and why you need to think outside the box when it comes to tech screening and hiring. Doing this is a sure-shot formula to reach those ambitious tech hiring goals you’ve set for yourself.

P.S. If you haven’t already gone through our previous episode, here you go! – Episode 3: How to up your collaborative hiring game in 2020 ft. Breaking Bad

Source: Reddit

For our finale, we’ve chosen a show that everyone is obsessed with—Stranger Things. This show has just enough intrigue to keep a seasoned pro on their toes while giving us major ‘80s nostalgia. The reason why we chose this show for this particular episode is the main protagonist, Eleven, aka El. If you’ve watched this show, you’ll know that the first impression anyone has of Eleven is of a helpless runaway who’s been subjected to something terrible. When she takes refuge at her soon-to-be-friend Mike’s place, you’d only feel sorry for her. But 20 minutes into the show, you’ll see Eleven channel her telekinetic skills to actually topple a truck while on the run from her abductors, giving us a goosebump-worthy moment when we least expect it🤯

Source: Amino Apps

Now think of it. If El was a resume you were screening, would you actually consider her a worthy candidate? With her shaved head and hospital gown, many would just judge her by her first impression and add her to a pile of other resumes that didn’t make the cut, thus disregarding her actual skill set. 

And then there are the ‘Jim Hoppers’ who claim to have the skills but rises to the occasion much later (for the uninformed, Jim Hopper is the sheriff in El’s town who conveniently ignores the sinister events happening around him initially).

Source: The Geek Heral

78% of resumes contain misleading statements, while 46% contain actual lies!

This is precisely why you need to hire based on skills if nothing else. According to staff.com, a tech giant like Google receives close to 2 million job applications in a year and with recruiters spending an average of just 6 seconds looking at a candidate’s resume, there is a high chance of overlooking potential ones. 

The key takeaway—Seeing someone’s skills in action is a far better indicator of their performance than their CV

Here’s how you can measure how good a developer is at his job.

Screen coding skills before interviewing a developer in person

Incorporating skill-based assessments in your tech screening process is a sure-shot way of bringing only viable candidates to the interview stage. This also gives more bandwidth to your hiring managers to assess these candidates further on technical skills in the upcoming interview rounds.

Skill-based assessments allow you to create tests for a variety of programming skills ranging from basics such as C and C++ to more advanced topics such as Big Data. 

Create a take-home coding test for free

Why skill-based hiring should be your go-to

1. You reduce the time to hire

Time to hire measures how quickly a recruiter is able to hire a candidate. Skill-based assessments reduce the number of tech screening rounds, thus reducing the time to hire.

A skill-based assessment can bring down your time to hire by 50%!

2. You reduce your cost per hire

The cost per hire is the total cost involved in hiring an employee. Technical assessments allow you to hire at scale at much lesser costs.

A skill-based assessment can save 87% of your hiring cost!

3. You improve the quality of tech hires

Quality of hire is the value a new employee brings to your company. This depends on how successful you are at finding candidates who are the right fit for your organization. Skill assessments can help you screen and shortlist talented developers quickly.

70% of the candidates who passed a skill-based assessment ended up getting hired!

4. You can scale your tech hiring

As your organization grows, your hiring requirements also grow. Skill assessments help you scale your hiring process through automated candidate screening, allowing you to screen more candidates in less time.

Companies have sped up their hiring cycle by 98% through assessments!

5. You can increase recruiter bandwidth

Recruiter bandwidth is the time and resources at the disposal of a recruiter. As all tactical aspects of hiring are taken care of by the skill assessment platform, it frees up more time for recruiters to concentrate on other aspects of hiring.

A skill assessment platform can increase recruiter bandwidth by 66%!

Now that you’ve discovered all the benefits of skill-based assessments, it’s time you started using them for screening and hiring developers. Also, if you’d be interested in trying out an assessment tool for yourself, you can sign up here. 

We hope you’ve learned some great lessons over the course of #NetflixandHire. It’s time I went back to binge-watching more TV shows and I will be back with more content soon. Until next time. Till then, #NetfixandHire! 😎

Soumya Chittigala Author 14 Blogs