Beyond the CV: how we assess technical depth

A CV tells you where someone has worked and which technologies they have touched. It does not tell you how they think, what they actually built or how they behave when a system breaks at 2am. As former developers, we try to find that out early, before a client spends hours in interviews.

We do it through conversation, not tests. Here is how.

We ask about one system, in detail

Instead of walking through every job, we ask a candidate to pick one system they know well and explain it. Then we keep asking "why":

• Why was it designed that way?
• What would you change if you started again?
• Where did it fail, and how did you find out?
• What did you personally build, and what did the team build?

People with real depth light up at this point. They talk about trade-offs, constraints and mistakes. People who mostly watched from the side tend to stay at the level of buzzwords.

We listen for trade-offs, not answers

There are rarely right answers in engineering, only reasonable trade-offs for a given situation. We pay attention to whether someone can say "we chose X because of Y, and the cost was Z". That sentence shows judgement, and judgement is what separates senior engineers from experienced ones.

We separate "I" from "we"

Good engineers are team players, so "we" is natural. But we gently ask what their own part was. Someone who led a migration should be able to describe the plan, the risks and the rollback strategy. Someone who joined at the end should say so, and that is fine too. Honesty about scope is itself a strong signal.

We look at how they learn

Technology changes constantly, so the most useful question is often: "Tell us about something you had to learn quickly." We listen for how they approached it, where they got stuck and what they would do differently.

What we do not do

• We do not run trick questions or brain teasers.
• We do not score candidates on keyword matches.
• We do not pretend to replace the client's technical interview. Our job is to make sure the people who reach it are worth everyone's time.

Why this matters for both sides

For companies, it means fewer interviews with people who look right on paper but are not a fit. For candidates, it means talking to someone who understands their work and can represent it properly to a hiring manager.

A good first conversation should feel like talking shop with a colleague. If it feels like an exam, something has gone wrong.