TALENT & HR · 04
Technical Screening
Independent technical assessment of candidates, whether they came from us, from another agency or from your own pipeline. For hiring managers without the bandwidth to interview a long list, and for HR teams who need a defensible reason for every rejection.
A scorecard before the first interview
Screening is only useful if everyone agrees what good looks like. Each assignment starts by turning the role into observable criteria: the systems the person must have built, the depth expected at that level, and the behaviours that matter in your environment. Weightings are agreed with the hiring manager and fixed before candidates are seen.
Every candidate is then assessed against the same criteria, which makes shortlists comparable and rejections explainable.
Work sample over whiteboard puzzle
Abstract algorithm puzzles predict little about performance on an enterprise integration or a payment reconciliation. Assessments are built from work resembling the actual role: reading unfamiliar code and explaining it, debugging a failing service, reviewing a design, or a short take-home followed by a conversation about the choices made.
Sessions are time-boxed and respectful of candidates, because senior people withdraw from processes that waste their evenings.
- Live technical interview with a senior engineer in the relevant field
- Optional short work sample, reviewed in conversation
- Consistent rubric applied across every candidate for the role
Written evidence you can defend
Each candidate receives a written report: score against each criterion, verbatim evidence from the interview, strengths, risks, and a clear recommendation. Where a candidate is a no, the report says why in terms a hiring committee and an HR partner can both use.
Reports also flag what to probe in later stages, so your panel is not repeating ground already covered.
Screening for the systems you actually run
Interviewers are matched to the domain: someone who has run Kubernetes in production assesses the platform candidates, someone who has shipped payment integrations assesses the backend hire. Where a role sits outside the areas our engineers know well, we say so rather than sending a generalist to bluff through an hour.
What you get
- Role rubric with weighted, observable criteria agreed upfront
- Interview guide and question bank matched to your stack
- Live technical interview per candidate with a senior engineer
- Work sample designed and reviewed where the role warrants it
- Written report per candidate with evidence and a recommendation
- Comparative summary across the candidate pool
- Suggested probes for your later interview stages
- Calibration session with your interviewers, on request
Typical outcomes
48 hours
Turnaround from interview to written report
60-90 min
Typical assessment length per candidate
1 rubric
Applied to every candidate for a role
Questions
Yes, and that is a common use of this service. Screening is priced per assessment and carries no obligation to use our recruitment, which keeps the judgement independent.
There would be if the same person did both, so the interviewing engineer is not the recruiter earning the placement fee, and reports include the negatives. If you want full independence, ask us to screen only candidates from other sources.
We assume it is used, because it is. Tasks are designed so the follow-up conversation exposes whether the candidate understands what was produced, which is the thing worth measuring now.
Technical interviews run in English by default, which matches most engineering teams here. Where a role is customer-facing or the candidate is more comfortable in Arabic, we arrange an Arabic-speaking interviewer.
Related
Next step
Start with a 20-minute call.
Tell us the roles you need filled, the system you need built, or both. You will speak to someone who has done the work, and leave the call with a route forward.