Glossary
What is technical screening?
Technical screening is the assessment of a candidate's actual technical ability before they are put in front of a hiring manager, as distinct from matching keywords on a CV.
Done well it is a conversation with someone who has done the job: the systems the candidate built and owned, the trade-offs they made, how they debug, and how they work with others. Done badly it is a quiz or an automated test that filters out experienced people and lets through practised test-takers.
The value to a hiring team is time. If every candidate who reaches a first interview has already been assessed by an engineer, the interview loop starts from evidence and the team spends its hours on people who can do the work.
Should a recruitment agency technically screen candidates?
Only if the person doing it is technical. A screen by a non-technical recruiter adds little beyond the CV. At OpenSource the screen is run by a founder who was a software developer, and the written summary goes to the client with the CV.
Is a take-home test a technical screen?
It is one form of it, and a costly one for the candidate. Strong senior engineers increasingly decline long take-homes, so many teams use a structured technical conversation or a short paired exercise instead.