Flip your assessment process on its head by starting with soft skills

If you want reliable community data on AI’s impact, check out the 2024 AI Skills and Impact Report. Get access to the report now.

As AI accelerates the shifting focus away from technical skills to problem-solving and soft skills, the traditional approach to assessing candidates is not working anymore.

But, finding a new approach that works without reinventing the wheel can be a challenge for hiring teams who are already doing more with less. Here, we look at how you can adapt your hiring process in response to AI by starting with soft skills and finishing with technical skills.

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AI is flipping tech assessments on its head

As an engineering manager, what skills are most important to assess during the hiring process?

Traditionally, assessing a developer's skills would start by testing their technical skills. If someone passed a technical test, they'd move on to assess their cultural fit and how they'd work with the team. This approach made sense when a developer's technical skills were the primary way they tackled problems, drove business goals and addressed customer pain points.

Now, AI has made it easier to create or translate code from one language to another. That’s not to say that AI has made technical skills redundant. Instead, it’s more important than ever that a dev approaches problems in the right way and uses their skills effectively.

Moreover, other changes in the software development process require developers to possess a bigger skill set. Modern software projects are complex and require developers to collaborate across teams and with multiple stakeholders.

A better approach starts by embracing the new skills hierarchy

A better way to approach assessing developers is not as hard as you might think. In fact, it could be as simple as flipping the order around. This means starting with soft skills and team fit to make sure that a candidate has what it takes to work with your team and aligns with your company values.

Harley Ferguson, Co-founder and CEO of Origen Software, shares their hiring process that focuses on soft skills first:

“The first thing we do is just chat to them and get to know their history. We’re looking to see if they'll be a cultural fit and if they're aligned with our team and values. You can generally tell pretty quickly. If we feel like that's going well, we will mature into the second phase, which is their problem-solving.”

The next step is gauging how candidates approach complex problems. As engineering managers prioritise these over technical skills, it makes sense to prioritise them before giving someone a technical assessment.

Developers often have a toolbox of AI and code tools at their disposal. But, it's no longer enough to assume that experience in a particular tool means someone can use these tools in a way that achieves measurable results.

Instead, their problem-solving skills are a better indication that they know what tools to use when and why. Luckily, this doesn't need to be a complicated process.

One option is asking candidates to talk you through a problem and how they'd approach it irrespective of the tools, stack or technology they use. The goal is to make sure that someone can identify the actual problem they need to address, what it would take to find a workable solution, and how they'd go about solving it with a particular set of tools.

Save your tech assessments for people who pass through the first two stages

In this new approach, technical assessments are for candidates who pass earlier stages of the process. But be careful – the assessment you choose can have a negative impact on your candidate experience and overall company reputation

"What do you dislike most about the interview process?"

For example, irrelevant assessments and technical questions are two of developers biggest hiring process pain points.

The trick here is choosing an assessment that closely resembles what developers will work on in a role.

Harley Furgeson suggests using a take-home assessment, as they're a better way to gauge how someone performs on a task directly related to the role they're interviewing for.

And the biggest benefit? Because you're only giving assessments to candidates who passed earlier screening, you're not giving as many assessments out. That means your hiring team can devote more time and resources to the remaining people in your pipeline.

If you’re looking for reliable data on AI’s impacts on the SA tech ecosystem, download the 2024 AI Skills and Impact Report. With data from the South African tech community, you'll get exclusive insights and data into:

How developers are freeing up capacity with AI tools
The AI skills developers need to drive impact
The growing importance of soft skills