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You post a senior software engineer job and within hours, hundreds of applications flood in. Most look and sound identical and come from unqualified candidates. Finding the right engineer takes weeks, and by the time you do, you’re exhausted. If this sounds familiar, this post is for you.
First, let’s look at why this is happening
AI has changed how candidates apply for jobs.
- Many are blindly using AI tools to polish resumes and mirror your job post word-for-word just to beat the system.
- Others carelessly rely on AI auto-apply tools to send hundreds of applications even while they sleep, flooding your inbox with spam.
Traditional ATS platforms do not help much because they don’t filter out unqualified candidates upfront. Instead, they use keyword matching to score and rank resumes, but candidates are already using AI to polish their resumes to include those keywords. It ends up as AI judging AI, creating zero real value for everyone involved. You waste hours reviewing unqualified applications while great software engineers get buried in the noise.
So, how can you hire a senior software engineer without this chaos?
Create a job post, source, and filter effectively
Write a compelling job post on WorkScreen, a hiring platform that screens candidates for real performance. Then, share the link you receive on trusted sites like:
Candidates apply through the link, and the platform automatically filters out unqualified applicants, giving you a shortlist of top software engineers.
Next, interview smartly.
During interviews, avoid generic questions that AI tools can easily answer, like:
- “What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses as a software engineer?”
Instead, ask questions rooted in real experiences, like:
- “Tell me about a time you released code into production and later regretted it. What happened?”
Then dig deeper with questions like:
- “Who else was involved?”
- “How did you communicate the issue to the team?”
- “What did you learn from it?”
Going deeper helps you gauge who has truly gone through such an experience and who is faking it.
And lastly, skill test candidates
Before you make the final offer, give the senior software engineer a short skill test to gauge real-world ability. You can do this easily with Workscreen.
So, if you are tired of wasting time on the wrong candidates, hire a good senior software engineer with Workscreen in days, not weeks.
