An honest, professional IT candidate is very adept at knowing if he/she is qualified for the position, or if it fits their specialization, by looking at the job description and the specific industry (financial, insurance, telephony, etc.)

2. Candidates from job postings:

90% unqualified, looking to “come-up-in-the-world”. Usually accompanied with “I can learn that really fast”. Sorry– not fast enough for most hiring managers. (HM’s are holding less hands these days.) Even tech savvy professionals can’t “hit the ground running” fast enough for HM’s.

3. Ask the HM if there’s a specific skill-set/software they’re looking for, or set’s of skill-sets, that’s not even close to the original job description. Ask the candidate if they have that experience– I’ve seen it more times than I care to.

Most of the open positions in our company are IT related, and in this day and time, an ad from a software company brings in a mountain of resumes. We’re in a specialized industry, and that causes us to look for specific experience, so most of the applicants are not qualified for the positions – but they’d sure like to convince you that they are, and IT people seem to be some of the worst! Over the years, I’ve listened to countless programmers and technical support people exaggerate their experience/duties to make the most mundane IT job sound important, (like, gee… I never knew it took so much talent to back up a hard drive!), or answer ‘Yes’ to everything, just to get a ‘foot in the door’. They know those ‘buzz words’ too.

We’re a small company, and can’t afford to have them waste valuable time, so getting them screened properly on the front-end is paramount. Fortunately, I work directly with one of the owners of the company, who is an exceptionally talented programmer. So, to cut through the garbage and get to the specifics, he helped me compile (and understand) a list of questions that are directly related to the job. The questions are very detailed, include follow-up questions to certain answers, and are asked of every possible applicant. Whenever a new position opens up, we review the questions to make certain they are all still applicable. This method has helped tremendously in getting the most qualified applicants through the door – which makes it so much easier to narrow the applicants down to actual candidates.