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During our interview process we give the candidate a programming test as well as a programming design problem.
Our HR department has told us to stop administering the programming test due to legal concerns. This would really hinder our ability to screen candidates.
Are there other HR policies that prevent you from hiring capable programmers?
Two things I've seen at my current job:
Inappropriate job titles
We wanted to hire a senior level system admin to do manage our development/production environment. The job also required implementing new security measures for HIPAA. Anyway, the job title was 'Director of Hosted Systems and Security' because half of the technology department is made up of directors. The resumes we got were from people with a ton of high level experience. One guy managed the server farm for MacDonalds and had not been hands on in years.
We were getting nowhere, because all of the people HR was bringing in for interviews had been hands off management types. I posted the description under a different title. I knew a lot of network engineers/sys admins from my previous job and one of them saw it and applied. I had reached out to a couple of people directly from my prev job, but no one wanted to make any moves.
Inappropriate job responsibilites
In my current shop, we're all server side java programmers, and no one is really good on the front end in terms of javascript, html, or css. Now the javascript is easy (but trying to get some people to learn jquery is a pain) but no one even wants to learn that part.
We needed to find a front end developer for our department's projects who could also do projects for our Client Services and Marketing departments. The job description we posted kept requiring java skills, even when that's not what we really needed. Sometimes HR thinks that all of the tech people interchangeable and should have the same skills.
"We need someone with X years experience in technologies Y and Z."
Experience is great, but we really need someone that can learn quickly.
There's screening. In many places, HR screens all resumes and applications, and may screen out good people. There's a possibly apocryphal story about Mitch Kapor, who founded Lotus (unless I'm getting my companies wrong): he took the resumes of the first fifty Lotus employees, changed the specifics so they wouldn't be recognized, and had them submitted to HR, which promptly rejected all of them.
Ask for some evidence. The only thing I can think of is if someone found out you hired a candidate with a lower score they would have a better case for discrimination.
Oh there's plenty I've run across in the past
It goes on....
I like to call HR 'Legal Compliance' as most HR functions now revolve around avoiding perceived legal issues. I say perceived because in reality that's what most of them are.
Push back at your HR department, make them do their jobs and get them to tell you exactly why you can't have a test. I'll be impressed if they come up with genuine case law to support their argument.
