The pattern, or filtering process, for landing an IT job appears to be:
1. have your resume/application match at least 90% of the requirements of the position posted.
2. pass a phone interview conducted by a HR person.
3. pass a technical phone interview conducted by an IT person.
4. get a face-to-face interview.
But things can go south easily if the technical interview is done by HR. I had one recently. The HR person was apologetic upfront about doing it–she was given a list of questions and expected answers, and admitted she was not technical. The position was .NET Developer, with C# programming language. I’m confident in my .NET development capability; however, all of it has been with Visual Basic (VB.NET). I tried to convince her that for someone with 30+ years of experience in multiple languages, picking up the next one (C#) would be a very short learning curve. The important knowledge to bring to the job was the development experience coupled with the .NET framework–knowing what was possible with the libraries, the tools (Visual Studio, Expression Suite, etc.). I could tell I was losing the battle explaining this. A month later, sure enough, I feel as comfortable programming in C# as I did in VB. Too late for that position though.
Is this a new phenomena for IT job seakers–having HR do the technical interview? It certainly protects the company’s developers time–not spending it on potential candidates.