I have had success hiring junior developers who I thought were exceptionally intelligent, even when their experience didn't make them the best candidate. I'd like to continue hiring with this strategy, but to be more deliberate about identifying intelligence.<p>How do I judge?
I have had similar success stories and a few that accidentally came through the process.<p>It helps if you can be more specific and not use loaded terms like 'intelligence'. If it was a single metric placements would not be so complex.<p>Here are some things I look for: intrinsic interest/self-starting, logical reasoning, high-level or conceptual thought processes, abstract or mathematical mental models (e.g. non-procedural thinking), open-mindedness/lateral thinking/connecting non-adjacent knowns, algebraic/symbolic representations and manipulation.<p>That doesn't even make up half though. A larger part is more about how they actually go about working day-to-day. Are they easy to talk/disagree with? Show continued interest in learning or content to apply what they know? Can work on longer projects to completion? Do the necessary boring stuff.<p>A good team needs mostly the latter qualities and a few members that can sometimes be the 'cooks' in the restaurant.
Standardized test scores, grades, degrees, ranks of the degree-granting institutions.<p>Is this hard? Or are you asking how to judge when you don't have access to all the metrics normally used by admissions committees for this purpose?