Technology hiring strategies tend to favor the candidate who possesses an alphabet-soup of degrees, programming languages, and software. However, in many cases, the applicant who has a wider range of work experience, or additional ‘soft skills’ not listed in the job description, can often be a better choice. In this report, Jeff Hamilton describes in detail how candidate assessment can be conducted to ensure that companies in a position to hire even in these difficult economic times can be certain that they are really getting the best value for their time and money.