Let's say you the one paying for the ideal hiring process you mentioned above. You're the owner of a bootstrapped business, or you're in a large company and have a fixed budget with which to work. You advertise a 10 junior positions, and get 100 applications per position (let's assume 1000 total unique individuals). In this situation, would you make any changes to your ideal hiring process mentioned above?
A sibling post said this involves cutting people out at the pre-interview stage which I agree with. I don't know to what extent recommendations should be able to help int his "ideal process". I think this where proxy metrics like highest degree earned, years experience help.
I've never worked for a company that gets 100s of qualified applications per position (edit: apart from call centre) and I'd wonder how a bootstrapped company would get so many applications?
You throw out 900 resumes between step 1 and 2 because they didn't manage to submit one without tens of spelling mistakes?
I agree though that having everyone write a cover letter, that they can write in their own time, and that you can read in your own time is preferable though.
Better yet, just leave off on the cover letter requirement.
When we looked for a Django dev we got two applicants, and the good one of the two only wanted to work freelance. Admittedly we were looking for some experience.
A lot of it is situational. A company in San Francisco hiring a junior Rails dev will probably get a LOT of recent bootcamp grads as applicants. Last I checked, most bootcamps were still focused on teaching Rails. So that's on factor. I was recruiting for Rails in SF, so that's part of it. You learn to optimize for challenges you have.
