Technical Interviewer Traits That You Should Look For

While observing the corporate recruitment processes, I have noticed that many companies end up hiring the “wrong people” for their recruiting positions. However, what surprises me is that some recruiters lack the communication skills required to properly represent their companies. Technical interviewers play a crucial role in a company as they are responsible for hiring and working with specialized professionals. They search for suitable candidates, conduct interviews, and evaluate applicants’ qualifications to ensure a perfect match between the company and the candidate.

Being a recruiter is no mean task. This statement is truer than ever in the current age, where a recruiter has to hire people with different skill sets for different roles. All these roles vary so much that as a human recruiter, it becomes very challenging to know everything about the role for which they might be interviewing the candidate.

This is the major reason why many hiring ends up with an imperfect candidate getting the job and either not performing to the best of their ability or, even worse, leaving the job after a short span of time, thus affecting a company’s retention rate and increasing the cost of turnover.

So this is why there is a concept of technical interviews which ensures. This interview is solely focused on assessing a candidate’s problem-solving skills. The aim of the interview is to just see if the candidate has the technical skills required for the job.

This is why such interviews should be conducted only by those people who have a working understanding of the demands and the responsibilities of the role for which they are interviewing the candidate.

Also Read: How To Create A Job Description For A Software Developer?

Four key technical interviewer traits

If you are a technical interviewer then you have to deal with the complexities of technology. Although most interviewers are not experts in the intricacies of technology, they should have at least a basic knowledge of related topics. In addition to technical knowledge, it is also very important that technical interviewers have good soft skills. Interviewers spend most of their day interacting with people in some way. Therefore, it is important to be empathetic, open-minded, and committed. Here are some of the most important skills for a technical interviewer.

Update your knowledge

In a field as rapidly evolving as IT, stagnation is unacceptable. You need to keep up with the latest developments in this field. Otherwise, you risk being left behind by your competitors. Furthermore, given the vast amount of knowledge and its versatility, one must be able to search for and absorb new information fairly quickly. Opting for any interviewer training program within the organization also helps a lot in getting a clear picture of the recruitment.

Commitment

An interviewer’s job isn’t over until the right person is found and sits behind their desk. Therefore, persistence and commitment are very important. As a technical interviewer, you should always keep the end goal in mind, but you should also be willing to take a step back and try a different approach when things don’t go as planned during the hiring process. These skills are especially important in the competitive world of technology. This is one of the technical interviewer traits. 

Also Read: Different Job Interview Formats – A Quick Guide

Patience

This is often forgotten, but patience is actually one of the key qualities of a technical interviewer. The difference when choosing an IT specialist is that it can take weeks or even months to find the right one. During this period, you should be prepared to first dig deep into the technology field in which you will be hiring employees. You need to know the common IT solutions, terminology, and skills in this field and understand who the key players are.  You can also understand market dynamics and assess its prospects. Only then can the main part of the selection process, the actual candidate search, begin. Again, patience is the key to success. 

Finding a suitable candidate who meets all the basic requirements may not be immediate and may take 3-5 weeks or longer depending on the required stack and position characteristics. Add in the time it takes for all the interviews, test tasks, feedback exchanges, and decision-making, and you’ll find that the results of your work only appear after a long time.

Build relationships with candidates

One of the key conclusions from this article is that many interviewers fail to build trusting relationships with candidates. Interviewers who can see the world through a candidate’s eyes are more likely to be successful. Building respectful relationships with candidates is also important for a good interviewer. Before you begin the interview, improve your active listening skills and take the time to understand your specific candidate’s needs and culture. Please note that there is no typical job opening. Each customer’s request and offer is different. A good IT recruiter knows that companies aren’t just looking for technical skills and knowledge; they’re looking for people who fit into their team, share their passion and vision, and ensure they deliver the desired results.

Also Read: Breaking Down Hiring Skills: Importance of Soft Skills in Hiring

At the end

Finding the right technical talent requires more than just technical knowledge. By staying informed, being proactive, developing patience, and improving your ability to make good relations with candidates, you can transform yourself from an average interviewer to a champion interviewer for your upcoming hiring process. Remember, these key technical interviewer traits are essential in ensuring to hiring best candidates for the team.

This is why such interviews should be conducted only by those people who have a working understanding of the demands and the responsibilities of the role for which they are interviewing the candidate.

However, what if there was an added layer in the recruitment process that would further help a recruiter understand the technical details of the role? This is where we can leverage the use of AI to further make the recruitment process more efficient.

This is why BarRaiser is probably the best way for companies to improve the hiring process. We have already mentioned in the article that due to the lack of technical expertise, interviewers generally hire unsuitable candidates; however, with BarRaiser, that is no longer an issue. This is because our AI bot can find the perfect questions with simple instructions.

So, for example, if an interviewer is interviewing for the role of a software developer who should have knowledge of C, C++, and R, they can simply ask the AI bot to create a set of questions for the interview. During the course of the interview, the recruiter can ask the AI to go through the candidate’s resume or even the context of the interview to create new questions.

However, how can our tool analyze whether the answers that were provided were correct or not? This is why we record and even transcribe every one of our interviews. These interviews are then uploaded to the dashboard, where every person involved in the hiring can see them. There, they can deeply analyze the interviews, adding their own points, which can help determine which candidate is the most suitable for the role.

So, with BarRaiser, you’re getting both Quick hiring and Quality hiring. Our tool also places an emphasis on Diversity and inclusion, which helps eliminate Hiring bias and ensures that our clients find the best and most suitable candidates for their workplace.