The rapidly growing pool of tech talent in LatAm is helping close the once-wide hiring gap in the tech industry. But what’s the best way to go about hiring top candidates? Here’s a bit of insight into the first step in Howdy’s hiring process (which eventually filters out 99% of applicants):
Applicant Evaluation
The initial phase of Howdy’s hiring process is an evaluation that assesses candidates' employment history, English fluency, and general skill sets. This preliminary screening helps cut the candidate pool in half, and approximately 50-60% of candidates advance to the next round of interviews.
Some candidates may not initially interview with substantial English-speaking skills, and others may not have enough work experience. Both are qualities that candidates can improve with time, so we strongly encourage rejected candidates to reapply down the road.
English Proficiency
Most of the candidates we recruit work with US-based companies, so we test their conversational English proficiency and ability to communicate business ideas clearly and concisely. To sharpen their skills, we offer all hires semi-private English tutoring during their employment with Howdy.
Work History
During the first interview, we want to understand candidates' previous work in their field. While software development roles require specific technical skills (Python, SQL, GitHub), we also recruit HR specialists, product managers, and UX/UI designers.
Relevant experience is necessary for all roles that we fill, but we also evaluate candidates' soft skills to assess their abilities to jibe with their future employer. That’s why we contact previous employers to get a comprehensive view of the candidate’s work ethic and compatibility with former team members.
Technical Proficiency
The technical screening is the last evaluation stage, where we identify familiarity with specific programming languages. This portion of the screening process is only relevant for software developers because the languages and platforms used in projects can span a broad spectrum, and we want to make sure they can immediately recognize a sample of written code. We incorporate more technical challenges later in the interview process, but knowing how much exposure candidates have to actual coding is important.
The interviewing standards only get more rigorous after the qualified candidates advance to the next evaluation stage. This screening is just the first step in our multi-tiered interview process, which ultimately nets LatAm's top 1% of tech talent.