How Technical Recruiting Agencies Interview Candidates

Recruiting is a hard and often drawn-out process and finding the right candidate is often a challenge. To find the right IT candidate, it is important to understand the requirements of the position thoroughly. What are the expectations for that role? To locate the right candidate, one needs to have a proper staffing strategy. HR professionals and/or hiring managers often prefer to work with technical recruiting agencies because they help in finding candidates faster and also significantly reduce chances of wrong hires.

When a business works with technical recruiting agencies, the staffing company usually takes all the responsibility of finding the right candidate.  An employer may post an advertisement for an open position and receive tons of applications for the position. Receiving applications from unqualified candidates will not do an employer any good. Rather he will waste time weeding through the unqualified resumes. It is better to ask for the service of a recruitment agency. A staffing firm has a pool of qualified resources and it can help employers find a candidate with the skills they need in no time while reducing the chances of wrong hires.
A staffing company usually performs the initial screening of a candidate and also gives candidates an aptitude test to determine their skills and mental makeup.

So, how does a staffing company start its screening process?

Interviewing a candidate

Interviewing is one of the important components in the screening process.  One needs to be focused, and must be able to listen to and process thoughts during the interview.  An interviewer should be able to thoroughly assess a candidate’s technical knowledge and mental makeup before making an offer. Hiring managers usually do not have time to interview a long list of candidates before selecting the right one. That’s why they prefer to work with a staffing agency. A staffing company usually conducts the first few rounds of interviews and then sends one or two selected candidates to a company’s HR for the final hiring decision.

Start with easy questions

They typically begin an interview with easy questions and gradually build up to the more complex ones.  This helps in asking probing questions. Studying a resume is an integral part of an interview process. This enables them to ask more engaging and personal questions of a candidate, like his hobbies and interest. Asking these questions is important to assess the mentality and interest of a candidate. A recruiter needs to find this out in order to ensure that the shortlisted candidate matches the culture and work environment of the company.

Ask for practical tasks

Once a candidate gets qualified in the interview process, a recruiter usually asks him to do a practical task, like giving a presentation or preparing a report. This is important to ascertain whether the candidate has all the skills he has claimed during the interview process. His work provides a testimony to his technical skills. A recruiter can also test whether or not a candidate can perform under high pressure situations.

Companies make Hiring Decisions, Technology Staffing Companies Accelerate the Process

Recruitment is an art. Not everybody can be a recruiter. A recruiter needs to have certain skills that will allow him to choose the right candidate for his clients from tons of resumes. Hiring is a difficult task. It’s time consuming and tiring. An HR professional or a hiring manager needs to have immense patience and above all a passion to meet people. He needs to have a good understanding of technology and people to excel in his profession.  Finding a suitable IT professional often becomes a big challenge for companies. Technology staffing companies can help businesses find candidates that perfectly match their business needs.

Find candidates faster
 
Technology staffing companies not only find the right IT professionals but find them faster.  An IT recruitment agency usually has a pool of pre-screened IT talent. When they get a request, they simply try to match the request with one of these candidates. As a result, they can find candidates faster than any other recruitment company or staffing firm. They can find candidates even faster than the hiring manager of a company. This is one of the main advantages of working with technology staffing companies.

Helps promote a productive work environment

There’s no reason to think that the candidates a staffing company processes might not measure up to the expectations of a company. On the contrary, working with a staffing company significantly reduces the chances of wrong hires. The recruiter of a staffing firm not only assesses the technical knowledge of a candidate but also takes a peek into his mental acumen. He tries to understand whether this candidate will be a good match for his client or not - both technically and psychologically.  This significantly reduces the chances of wrong hiring.

Hiring decisions can be made faster

When a business chooses to work with a staffing company, the recruitment firm manages all the responsibilities of finding the right candidate - from posting a job advertisement, to weeding through tons of resumes, scheduling interviews and finally short listing a few deserving candidates. Usually, an employment firm conducts the initial screening of a candidate. Successful candidates are then sent to the company for the final hiring decision.


Adequate staff is just not enough! A business needs to have the right people in the right place at the right time to succeed.  It is possible to make the day-to-day operations of a business smoother and more effective if a business looks for specific qualities in a candidate right from the beginning of the recruitment process.  The priority is to get the best candidate for the job that can be productive from the very beginning. The search can be narrowed down and companies can hire candidates whom they can train and develop. But staff development can be very expensive.

Hence, it is better to partner with a technology staffing company who can provide IT professionals that can be productive right from day one.