What is the best way to filter out the candidates even before the interview?

Question

Hiring consumes a lot of time and money. It is the most difficult task in an organization. We are currently hiring for an android and an iOS developer for our startup.

What according to you is the best way to filter out the candidates even before the interview, so only the filtered people come for the interview, thus reducing the effort.

Nikunj Verma · Accepted Answer

One way that worked for us early was writing an open letter to the candidates and asking every candidates to read it before talking to us. Along with the reasons to join our team, it honestly explained why one should NOT join us too. It reduced our incoming pipeline to about 15% but we only got those candidates who were a better fit - at least culturally.

In general, the idea of saving time in hiring is to analyze issues that come up later in the process and sorting them early. Some examples:

Technical gap: Do initial screening as early as possible. But I won't recommend sending a long test since it leads to huge drop off. You could use test scores shown by CutShort or do a quick 10 min call to do basic screening.
Attitude gap: At startups, we all look for self driven candidates. You can't ask questions to check this, so a good indicator is to look in their past. If they have mostly done what they were "asked to" and have no side projects, it's usually a red flag.
Salary gap: This is tricky. Many candidates initially say salaries don't much matter, but back off later. So the best way is to tell them the salary range upfront AND give them a short assignment. If they are still interested, they will submit the assignment. Else they will silently drop off. :)
Location gap: Many candidates say the'd be find with relocating earlier in the process, but again - back off when the times comes. For this reason, preferring local candidates is an option, but it may severely limit your options.

Would love to hear more thoughts from others on this!

Pratik Khedikar · Answer

Hey abhishekCongratulations that you have taken the road less travelled.My suggestion will be to take some online test using hacker-rank,or some other platform.They are also a lot already made tests i guess.This way you will know the ability of the candidates.you can also take psychometric tests of the individual if you want to know more about their thinking,principles etc.All the best brother.