For a software developer position, there isn't a trick to finding the best candidate. Your criteria do not determine how solid the candidates will be. Everyone is submitting 500 applications a month now, and those who automate the process submit thousands.

So how do you hire a great candidate? Pick a few from the lot, ask them if they can write a function, have them do a live FizzBuzz test, then ask them to deploy a service from localhost to an actual public server. That's it. Hire them after that.

As far as experience is concerned, they will learn on the job. If you think they don't know how to write tests or use a particular paradigm, they can ask ChatGPT and apply what it tells them a few times until they get familiar with it. People learn on the job. Nobody knows what the hell back pressure is until they encounter it in a particular service.

Everything else is really just random. We insist on things like culture, but we have no way of measuring it. It's all so arbitrary.

For example, early in my career I had an in-person interview where the head of HR brought me close to tears. She would make a joke, I would laugh, and while I was laughing she would stop and vigorously take notes. While she wrote, she would casually ask, "Why do you look so stressed out?" I nearly choked. I had just lost my father, and I had rescheduled the first interview so I could bury him.

The VP of engineering pulled a similar stunt on me. I did 6 interviews in 3 days, and they called me for a 7th. I lay on my bed, ready to give up. But I had a whole family to take care of and a giant shoe to fill, so I decided to do it. That same evening, I got an email saying the interview was cancelled; instead, they were ready to hire me. I didn't know whether I was supposed to be happy or mad.

It took 2 years on the job to figure out why they had done this to me. The person I was hired to replace had gone from a great employee to a complete psycho. Once, a teammate made the mistake of rejecting his PR. When he saw the rejection, he got up from his desk, climbed over the cubicles, and walked from desk to desk all the way to her cubicle. With his foot on her screen, he said, "What the fuck did you just do?"

So I learned that the culture and psychological test I was put through was meant to filter out this type of person. It could have been called a success, because I was well liked and never threatened anyone in my 4-year tenure at the company. However, that same test couldn't stop them from hiring two employees who ended up being convicted of murder. One of them had a well-televised trial and is currently serving life without parole.

So those culture interviews are only designed to please a manager somewhere. They have no documented effectiveness.

On Reddit's recruiting hell topic, you'll find mind-blowing stories of candidates being rejected for no good reason.

You might ask:

“What about experts? Surely the bar is higher than just writing a function, right?”

It's much easier to find an expert than people tend to admit. If you sort through your resume list right now and use only the criterion of 10-plus years in the field, you'll have your expert. Pick one, ask them to talk about their field of expertise, then hire them. If you're afraid they might not be the best candidate, I'm afraid to say that there is no way to determine that before they start working for you.

The problem is that companies want those experts at the price of an undergrad. Or they think they need to build the next Google when they run a small business with a manageable number of customers.

Hiring is only hard because we approach it like a dating app. We have unrealistic criteria for made-up scenarios. If they can write a function, you can hire them.