u/Separate_Object4849

This bothers me more than it should.

On paper, India has a supply surplus of engineering talent. 1.5 million graduates. Lakhs of bootcamp completers. Millions of experienced engineers across Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai.

And yet, every founder I talk to says hiring a solid developer is one of their biggest bottlenecks.

I think the problem is the signal layer, not the talent.

The hiring system still runs on:
- Self-reported resumes
- College tier as a proxy for ability
- Years of experience as a proxy for skill
- A 45-minute interview that tests anxiety as much as knowledge

None of these actually tell you if someone can build.

The result: great engineers from tier-2 colleges who can absolutely ship get filtered out early. Engineers who went to IIT but haven't written production code in years sail through.

Both groups lose. The company loses. The market loses.

What's your experience been? And has anyone found a hiring process that actually surfaces real ability regardless of college pedigree?

Recruiter friends, need a real talk here.

We've all been there. You screen a resume, it looks solid, you move the candidate forward. They get to the technical interview and... it's clear the resume was generous.

Hiring manager is frustrated. Candidate is embarrassed. You're stuck in the middle having done exactly what was asked of you: screen for resume fit.

But here's the thing, resume screening for skill accuracy is nearly impossible without some kind of verification. You can't know if someone "led" a project or just attended the meetings. You can't know if "proficient in Python" means 5 years or 5 Stack Overflow answers.

How are you handling this in your process? Have you found anything that gives better signal earlier, before you've used the hiring manager's time on a call that shouldn't have happened?

Not looking for "do a better job screening" takes. Genuinely asking about structural fixes people have found.