The benefits for tech recruiter using independent technical professionals to screen IT candidates are clear. Better results. Period. But how do you get your hiring managers on board?
Some IT hiring managers prefer to handle technical interviews internally—personally and/or using trusted members of their teams. They want to be confident that new hires possess the technical qualifications to be assets, rather than liabilities, in given job roles.
Hiring managers are all too familiar with the problems bad IT hires can cause, such as:
- Making major mistakes that delay or imperil important projects
- Failing to meet important deadlines
- Requiring extensive hand-holding and management
- Lowering team performance and morale
Technical interviews conducted internally may fail to use best practices, resulting in poor evaluations of candidates. Internal interviewers can knowingly or unknowingly be biased toward candidates with similar backgrounds, which reduces diversity. Some internal interviewers may not approve a highly qualified candidate because they are worried about their own job security. And the difficulty in finding time to fit interviews in busy schedules can slow down the hiring process by a week or likely more.
More and more employers and tech recruiter are avoiding these problems by outsourcing technical interviews to independent IT professionals who specialize in technical interviewing. But to be successful it’s important to turn hiring managers’ reluctance to outsource into support. Below is a four-step process that will help tech recruiter overcome hiring manager reluctance.
- Identify Forward-Thinking Hiring Managers to Discuss Outsourcing Technical Interviews
The most powerful ally to gaining IT hiring manager buy-in to use independent technical interviews is one of their peers who believes in the value. When a fellow hiring manager extols the virtues of outsourced technical interviews for candidate screening, other hiring managers are much more likely to listen and be swayed.
Your first move is to identify a good hiring manager to approach. The ideal hiring manager to pitch outsourced technical interviews to:
- Is receptive to others’ ideas
- Shows flexibility and a willingness to experiment and make changes
- Respects your input and works well with you
Once you’ve identified the hiring manager, arrange a meeting to discuss the value of outsourcing technical interviews.
- Meet With Hiring Manager to Explore Benefits of Outsourced Technical Interviews
You need to convince the hiring manager that outsourcing technical interviews to independent IT pros will—or at least could—work better than handling them internally. To accomplish this, discuss the benefits both for your organization and for the hiring manager personally.
You could discuss:
- Shortening time to hire. Outsourced interviews can be scheduled, conducted and scored quickly, often within 24 hours with a service like eTeki. This means a lower likelihood of losing top candidates to other companies.
- Improving the quality of hire. A number of factors enable outsourced technical interviews to help organizations—and hiring managers— screened by experts.. unbiased. Their sole goal is to properly screen candidates’ relevant technical qualifications. Acquire more effective IT talent when fit between qualifications and requirements
- Reducing bias within tech out process. Independent interviewers with relevant technical qualifications screen candidates for competencies and experience. Their insight untainted by personal preferences focuses on actual qualifications.
- Separating the contenders from the pretenders. Best practices in technical interviewing put candidates at ease, showcase the candidate’s accomplishment and provide the greatest understanding of future on the job behavior.
- Saving time. Instead of taking hours of time to plan for, conduct and evaluate technical interviews, the hiring manager and his or her team can focus on their core jobs, and get projects done.
- Do A Trial of Outsourced Technical Interviews With Hiring Manager
When you have the hiring manager interested in outsourcing technical interviews to independent IT professionals, suggest a trial run with one or more open positions. It’s essential here to use interviewers who have the technical qualifications to make the evaluations for these positions. Choosing the wrong interviewers will spoil the results.
Discuss the results of the trial run with the hiring manager. He or she will be confident after a few weeks if the candidates whom the outsourced interviewers approved have the skills and experience that he or she is seeking. If the hiring manager finds that the hires are strong, you should have a strong ally when you pitch the idea of outsourcing technical interviews to other IT hiring managers.
- Pitch Outsourced Technical Interviews to Other Hiring Managers
If the trial is successful, elicit the help of the hiring manager to encourage other IT hiring managers to try delegating technical interviews to external interviewers. You might do this slowly—one to a few hiring managers at a time—or in a large group. It’s a judgment call. Over time, using these four steps can help outsourced technical interviews become a valuable part of your organization’s hiring process for IT roles.
