Tech Lead Handbook
How to shortlist candidates
The What
Identify the candidates from the applicant pool you want to progress. Aka. CV screening. The Talent Acquisition (TA) team or Agency might help you with this.
The How
❤️ Must have
- Hard skills — programming, microservices, data modelling, front end, backend, architecture, system design, problem-solving, strategic thinking
- Working experiences: working years? projects? teams? programming languages? company types, corporate or product & tech, operational or creational, maintenance or development, consultant or own a product?
- Project experiences: languages, platforms, tech stack, frameworks, etc
💛 Good to have
It depends, some candidates care about their personal branding, and they might put more effort into open source community, personal blogs, etc. It is a good sign for good candidates but not required.
- Curious about tech, follow up newsletters, attend meetups or conferences
- Side projects — crafting code
- Creations: blogs, videos
- Certificates: AWS, GCP, etc
- Short courses or free YouTube videos
✅ Exceptions
- High potentials: junior to what you are looking for but willing to learn and learn fast.
- High motivations
🔴 Red Flags
- Many silly typos
- Simple formatting issue
- The CV looks like an essay
- Full of soft skills — lack of hard skills
🗒 Tips
- Make it part of your daily routine, 30 min a day and make it part of your life
- Balance high potential and aligned tech stack
- Leverage Agency or TA team
🕳 Pitfalls
- High experience ≠ high performance
- 1-year experience repeats 10 times ≠ 10 years of experience
