How to objectively assess a BIM modeller in an interview

“He seemed good.” That is often all that is left of a BIM interview once the three candidates have been seen and a decision has to be made. The problem is not a lack of rigour on the recruiter's part — it is that a CV and a conversation are not enough to measure a technical skill. Here is what really changes the picture.

The CV and portfolio trap

A candidate can list “Revit, Navisworks, Dynamo” on their CV without that saying much about their real level: did they model a complete building on their own, or only tweak views on a project whose structure a senior was handling? Have they ever managed a project template, or only worked inside one? The portfolio shows the result — never the candidate's share of the work, nor the decisions they made along the way.

Show me, don't tell me

The most useful question in a BIM interview is not “Do you know worksets?” but “When do you create a new sub-project, and how do you decide on the split?” The first calls for a yes or a no; the second forces the candidate to reason out loud, in their own words and with their own project examples. That is where you see the difference between “has heard of it” and “knows how to do it”.

A 4-level grid rather than a mark out of 10

A mark out of 10 given on instinct cannot be compared from one candidate to another, or from one recruiter to another. A grid with described levels can: each level corresponds to an observable behaviour, not an impression. For a skill such as “workset management”, it might look like this:

• 0 · No knowledge — does not know what a workset is
• 1 · Has heard of it — can create one, but with no clear splitting logic
• 2 · Can do it — creates worksets according to a consistent logic (by trade, by level, by party…)
• 3 · Mastery — can adapt the splitting strategy to the size and organisation of the project, and justify it

With this grid, two different recruiters, at two different times, arrive at roughly the same score for the same candidate. That is what makes the interview truly comparable — and defensible if someone asks why one candidate was chosen over another.

A mark out of 10 given on instinct cannot be compared from one candidate to another, or from one recruiter to another. A grid with described levels can.

A short, realistic practical exercise

A technical test should not look like an end-of-year exam. Fifteen to thirty minutes on a concrete case close to the job (cleaning up a poorly named model, fixing a parametric family, or simply commenting on an existing model out loud) is more than enough to see how the candidate reasons — without turning it into a stressful ordeal that only tests their resistance to pressure.

Comparing several candidates on the same criteria

The real benefit of a structured grid appears when you have to choose between two similar profiles: rather than relying on a gut feeling that is hard to justify, you compare their profiles directly, skill by skill, theme by theme. The decision becomes quicker to make, and easier to explain internally.