Why API Apply exists
by Amando AbreuI’ve screened hundreds of engineers over the years, and the thing they all had in common was that outwardly they had nothing in common.
- Some had essentially no CV, but aced technical interviews.
- Some had no degree
- Some had great CVs with all sorts of certifications but simply didn’t perform
- Some had degrees but couldn’t pass a basic technical screening
- Some were great with algorithms but couldn’t do more day-to-day real work stuff
However, I had to decide whether to move them to next stage by looking at their CV, and all the claims they made. This meant I was spending time looking at CVs of people who couldn’t perform. This uses up time. I wanted to not have to think about whether someone is capable of doing the work, and simply screening for culture-fit.
Out of all these candidates, how do I screen for people capable to doing the work, regardless of their CV or claimed experience, with the least amount work for the candidate? Nobody likes long interview cycles and long take-home challenges, I want to reduce friction here and respect people’s time.
So I decided to create a test, but it had some requirements:
- Must be easy and for someone capable to do, but hard someone uncapable
- Mustn’t be solely based on algorithms, because general engineers are expected to know more than just algorithms with the rise of DevOps culture
This eventually lead to the creation of API Apply.
Let’s assume 3 types of people:
#1 Experienced, capable
#2 Inexperienced, capable
#3 Inexperienced, not capable
#1 are expensive, hard to find
#2 is hard to detect, they can look like #3 and get filtered out on first look
#3 you don’t want. They often have beautiful CVs and tonnes of certificates ( with dubious validity: https://www.api-apply.com/blog/world-of-fake-coursera-certificates/)
#3 can be 50% (or more!) of people applying.
API Apply does a very good job at filtering them out because the application process is slightly more complicated than just pressing “submit” on an application form, while at the same time allowing #2 and #3 to get into your pipelines more easily.
The #3 you hire have #1 potential. Grow them well.
