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Pre-employment technical screening ideas ?

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by rmccabe44

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I am a Recruiter for a web development company, we are in the process of assessing our pre-employment screening test and I am looking for suggestions. For the most part, we run a LAMP environment, so I am always looking for great PHP Developers! Does anyone know any good technical screening/testing products, aside from Brainbench?
I appreciate any help!

6 replies

by locrian_lyric

The problem with screening tests is that they only tell you how well someone can pass a test and how well they can think *inside* the box.

The BEST way of screening an applicant is to ask open ended questions about the projects that they have done, encourage them to go into detail and outline how they solved problems.

Word of advice, ditch the tests entirely, know the PERSON.

by rmccabe44

I couldn't agree more that the personal approach shouldn't be lost; however, when I receive 200-300 resumes per day, I need a way to weed out some of the candidates that don't have the technical expertise or aptitude to meet even the bare requirements.
Thanks for the advice!

by locrian_lyric

The problem is that I know several senior level people who will refuse to take tests. One of them is absolutely brilliant and will skip over any position that requires a skills test like that.

Even if you use brainbench, you won't know if the person taking the test is the person applying for the job.

Then there are folks like me who test terribly, or are slow and meticulous and run out of time on those tests.

If you're looking for a way to asess someone to eliminate the posers, I'd go to your own IT folks and ask them for some questions to catch the BS'ers, as opposed to a standardized test that anyone can fake.

by boxfiddler Hot topic

screen test, in line with the service/s your company provides. If you are looking for exceptional performance within your own particular environment, then step outside the blanket solutions to test your applicants accordingly.

by tony hopkinson

to come up with five you must know this if you are a PHP Developer questions.
From each of those see if there are couple of deeper ones. Gotcha's, features an experinced dev would make use of. It's more assess the skill/knowledge level, and discount the guy who once put the current date on a page.

Let HR/recruiters do their useless drivel, then get one of your tech guys to do a telephone interview for the ones that have the right hair style etc.

The best screen is a human, and way chepaer than employing a parrot with a centre parting.

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