The Peer Review process
How we screen engineers
Five gates. Three to five days. Between 5% and 10% of applicants finish.
Most staffing firms describe their vetting in a sentence and ask you to take it on faith. This is the actual process, stage by stage — including what gets a candidate disqualified.
The principle
Why “peer review”
Technical screening at SkilldLabs is conducted by working engineers in the same discipline as the candidate. A React developer is screened by a React developer. A Go developer is screened by a Go developer.
The reason is narrow and practical: a generalist recruiter can verify that someone says the right things. Only a practitioner can tell whether the answer has depth behind it, or whether it stops one question past the surface.
Every screen is scored against our own rubric — not pass/fail, but graded on the depth of knowledge demonstrated in each area assessed.
The process
The five gates
Application review and cross-reference check
We verify that the person is who the application says they are. Résumé history, LinkedIn profile, stated employers and dates are cross-referenced against each other and against public record.
The candidates who fail here fail on inconsistencies — a résumé that doesn’t match the profile, a LinkedIn URL that belongs to someone else, dates that don’t reconcile.
Roughly 75% clear this gateEnglish excellence screen
Written and spoken English are assessed separately, because they fail separately. A candidate who writes flawless English but cannot hold a standup conversation is not a fit for a US team — and neither is the reverse.
Behavioral and psychological assessment begins at this gate, conducted by our Head of Recruiting.
Project review
The candidate walks through work they have actually shipped. Not a take-home exercise — real projects, with real constraints and real decisions.
We are looking for whether they can explain why the system is built the way it is: what the tradeoffs were, what they would do differently, what broke and how they found it. Behavioral and psychological assessment continues at this gate.
Technical skill review — the peer screen
A senior practitioner in the candidate’s own stack conducts the technical evaluation and scores it against the rubric. Same discipline, no exceptions.
Background check
We speak to former colleagues and former managers directly. Not automated reference collection — conversations.
A background check that does not cross-check against what the candidate told us is a disqualification, not a discussion.
Undisclosed AI use ends a candidate’s run
We allow AI tools in the work. We do not allow them, undisclosed, in the screening.
If a candidate uses an AI assistant during a technical screen where it has not been sanctioned, that candidate is disqualified. Not scored down — disqualified.
The reason is not ideological. If you hire an engineer through us, you are hiring a specific level of capability, and you need to know which parts of that capability are the person and which are the tool. An engineer who is excellent with AI assistance and weaker without it is a legitimate hire — but you should get to make that decision knowingly, not discover it in week three.
Red flags
What disqualifies a candidate
These end a candidate’s run rather than lowering a score.
- Communication gaps or slow response times during the process
- Undisclosed AI use during technical screening
- Background or reference checks that do not cross-check
- Incorrect or inconsistent information on the application
- A résumé that does not match the person
- A LinkedIn URL that is not theirs
The first one surprises people. How a candidate communicates during screening is the best available predictor of how they will communicate once embedded in your team. Someone who takes four days to answer us will take four days to answer you.
Accountability
Who runs it
Screening is not delegated to a rotating pool of generalist recruiters. The process is owned end to end by two people, working with a small bench of specialist recruiters.
Head of Recruiting — owns the process
Susana Rivas La Madrid
Licentiate in Psychology
Verify on LinkedIn →Credentials
- Licentiate degree, PsychologyUniversidad Ricardo Palma · 2010
- Master’s, Human Resources ManagementClermont School of Business · 2020
- Master’s, Organization & Management of PeopleESAN Graduate School of Business · 2020
- Chartered Professional in Human ResourcesCPHR Canada · 2022
- Tech Recruitment Certified ProfessionalSkillPanel · 2023
- Artificial Intelligence in HRThe Josh Bersin Company · 2025
- HR Strategic Business Partner ProgramThe Josh Bersin Company · 2020
- Employee ExperienceUniversidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas · 2020
Recruiting — screening and evaluation
Karina Estrella Pérez G.
Organizational Psychology
Verify on LinkedIn →Credentials
- Organizational PsychologyUniversidad Rafael Landívar · 2025
- Tech Recruitment Certified ProfessionalSkillPanel · 2024
- Technical RecruitmentCore Code io · 2024
- Data Engineering Career Guide & Interview PreparationCoursera · 2025
- ICAgile: Leading Technical TeamsPluralsight · 2025
- Living in an IT Team as a Business AnalystPluralsight · 2025
- Registered Scrum Basics™Agile Education by Scrum Inc. · 2025
- Google Cloud Certified — Generative AI LeaderGoogle · 2026
- Prompt Design in Vertex AIGoogle · 2025
No candidate reaches you without a psychology-trained recruiter signing off. Susana and Karina built the rubric, and every screen is completed by one of them before a profile is sent to a client. Other recruiters run gates; the standard, and the final call, stay with them.
Extended screening capacity
Additional specialist recruiters run the same five gates, against the same rubric, under the same disqualification rules. Their work is then completed and signed off by Susana or Karina.
Our recruiters hold Tech Recruitment Certified Professional (SkillPanel), among other credentials. Across the wider bench these also include EF SET English certification, LinkedIn Recruiter: AI-Powered Talent Acquisition, E-Verify case management in Bullhorn, and applied AI development.
We do not publish their names. Several work with other firms, and that is their business rather than our marketing.
The honest number
Why we publish 5–10%
It would be easy to write “top 1% talent.” Most of our category does. We publish 5–10% because that is the number our funnel actually produces, and a figure you can check is worth more than one you cannot.
If we still get it wrong
What happens when a placement misses
Five gates and a 5–10% completion rate still will not catch everything. A screening process is a filter, not a guarantee, and any firm that tells you otherwise is selling something. So the terms matter as much as the process.
What clients say about the engineers who finish
“SkilldLabs has been a great partner in scaling our platform. They’ve connected us with talented engineers from LATAM who integrate seamlessly with our team and deliver high-quality work.”
“SkilldLabs has been an incredible partner. They helped us scale quickly with exceptional Engineering talent… quality and the ease of collaboration have made a real impact.”
“Travis and his team are competent, highly qualified, and extremely professional. If you’re looking to fill a missing capability in your team, take a look at SkilldLabs.”
Want the engineers who finish?
Tell us the role and we will show you who cleared all five gates.
Start hiring