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Every Resource on 3DaysOfSwift.com Is Now Free — And Here’s How Recruiters Should Be Vetting iOS Developers in 2026
The iOS recruitment landscape has changed dramatically. AI tools are everywhere, candidates can submit dozens of applications with almost no effort, and hiring managers are becoming far more selective. In this new environment, recruiters face a difficult challenge: there are more applicants than ever, yet the overall quality of junior-level iOS developers has declined.
And because of this shift, the risk to a recruiter’s reputation has never been higher. Putting forward an underprepared developer now leads to immediate loss of trust from clients, fewer repeat contracts, and a direct hit to placement revenue. Recruiters need a stronger, smarter, and more reliable vetting process before candidates ever reach the hiring manager.
3DaysOfSwift.com can help solve that problem — and now, every single resource on our website is completely free.
Before we explain how, let’s outline what vetting should look like in 2025.
Why Recruiters Need a New Vetting Process
Modern iOS interviews test one thing above all else: Swift fluency. Not the ability to build UI screens or follow tutorials, but the ability to understand the Swift language deeply enough to reason about code, solve small logic problems, and communicate technical decisions under pressure.
Recruiters see the same failure points again and again. A candidate may present a visually impressive SwiftUI portfolio but crumble when asked to write a simple function. Others can describe their bootcamp project but cannot explain Optionals or the difference between structs and classes. Many rely on AI-generated code without understanding why it works, and when the interview removes AI from the equation, they freeze.
These gaps are not created by laziness or lack of talent. They are created by a fundamentally flawed educational path, where most online courses begin with iOS development rather than Swift itself. Recruiters experience the consequences of this daily, which is why a modern, structured vetting pipeline is essential.
Step 1: Assess Swift Understanding Before Anything Else
The first step recruiters should take is to determine whether the candidate truly understands Swift. Not in the superficial sense of “I’ve built a few apps,” but in the foundational sense of being able to work with the language itself. Candidates often underestimate how much Swift knowledge matters, and as a result, they are blindsided when interviews focus on language fundamentals rather than interface building.
A brief conversation is often enough to gauge this. Ask them how they would explain Optionals to a new developer, or how they understand the difference between value types and reference types. These questions reveal immediately whether the candidate has genuine language comprehension or whether their learning has been driven entirely by UI tutorials. Recruiters who perform this step protect themselves from forwarding unprepared candidates to clients.
Step 2: Require a Structured Swift Review Before Any Interview
This is where 3DaysOfSwift.com becomes invaluable. Candidates struggling with fundamentals do not need expensive coaching, paid courses, or months of preparation. They simply need a structured, interactive, and language-focused training path that teaches Swift properly.
Our platform provides this through a carefully designed sequence of Xcode playgrounds, interactive exercises, and foundational explanations. These tools were built while teaching hundreds of new developers entering corporate graduate programs, and they directly address the exact weaknesses that appear in interviews. Because every resource on the site is now free, recruiters can confidently direct candidates to complete the material without worrying about cost, licensing, or accessibility barriers.
Even candidates who believe they are already strong benefit from reviewing Swift fundamentals in an environment that mirrors real-world development. This step alone dramatically increases the likelihood of a successful interview.
Step 3: Have Candidates Demonstrate Their Skills in Xcode
A recruiter’s vetting process should always include a moment where the candidate demonstrates their Swift skills in the actual development environment they will use on the job. This is essential because many candidates can talk confidently but struggle to translate that knowledge into real code.
A simple requirement — such as recording a short screen capture of themselves solving a small Swift problem in Xcode — reveals their level of fluency instantly. It does not need to be a complicated task. Even something as simple as writing a function, creating a struct, or working with basic protocol-based design will show whether the candidate is comfortable with Swift in practice rather than theory.
This approach removes guesswork for recruiters and ensures only genuinely competent candidates progress to the next stage.
Step 4: Ensure They Are Familiar With Interview-Style Thinking
Technical interviews measure more than just the ability to write code. They assess how the candidate thinks, how they approach problems, and how they communicate under pressure. Recruiters can help candidates succeed by ensuring they are familiar with the patterns interviewers expect: explaining why code works, reasoning about behaviour, and walking through logic out loud.
The exercises on 3DaysOfSwift.com naturally develop these skills. They encourage deeper thinking, structured reasoning, and a clear understanding of Swift behaviours. By completing the lessons, candidates improve their confidence, become more articulate, and transition from “tutorial followers” to genuine problem-solvers — the kind of candidates hiring managers trust.
Step 5: Only Submit Candidates Who Pass Your Internal Bar
Following these steps establishes a high-quality internal vetting process that benefits everyone involved. Candidates feel better prepared. Hiring managers receive stronger applicants. And recruiters maintain — and often improve — their reputation as trusted partners who consistently deliver capable talent.
This process also increases placements. When a candidate passes technical interviews more frequently, recruiters see more offers extended, which directly translates into higher commission. Most agencies earn between 11% and 18% of a candidate’s annual salary when a placement is successful. Improving candidate readiness is therefore not just good practice — it is good business.
Why 3DaysOfSwift.com Is the Perfect Partner for Recruiters
For years, senior iOS developers have joked that if every junior spent two weeks completing the 3DaysOfSwift course — including the practice exercises — they would pass nearly every junior-level technical interview. The truth behind that joke is precisely why everything we’ve built is now free.
The resources on our site were not created in isolation or guesswork. They were shaped inside rooms where new graduates were learning Swift, asking questions, and confronting the same challenges your candidates face. These tools were used to strengthen developers so they could succeed in real professional environments. Now, they are accessible to anyone, anywhere, and at no cost.
Recruiters who integrate 3DaysOfSwift.com into their vetting pipeline will quickly see how much more prepared, confident, and technically capable their candidates become.
Every Resource on 3DaysOfSwift.com Is Now Free — And We Invite Recruiters Worldwide to Use It as Part of Their Vetting Process
We will end with the clearest message we can share:
Every learning resource we have built is now free.
Every lesson, every playground, every example, and every training tool is open to the world.
And we want recruiters everywhere to use these resources as a formal part of their vetting process.
In the new era of AI-assisted job applications and inconsistent developer quality, this is how recruiters can protect their reputations, increase their placement rates, and provide clients with genuinely well-prepared candidates.
We would be proud to stand alongside recruitment agencies around the world — helping them strengthen their pipeline, support their candidates, and improve the overall quality of iOS hiring.
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Swift Online Course
Also, as an additional bit of help 3DaysOfSwift has a free online 3-day course written by a successful iOS Developer with almost two decades experience in iOS.
3 Day Online Swift Course (written by senior iOS Developers)
Learn Swift and enrol in our 3-day online course. We have 3 days of instructional videos pair programming with our experienced instructor and Senior iOS Developer who guides you through writing code for each main language feature of Swift. There is extra coding practice too (with no videos so it's faster).
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Swift Study Guide
Also, as an additional bit of help 3DaysOfSwift has the Swift Study Guide (listed below and to download), which is a list of Swift language features each iOS Developer should know before applying for jobs in the tech industry.
List of Swift Language Features
Download the list of topics (Swift language features) you will be required to know in order to pass an interview for an iOS Developer role.
Download
Beginner Topics
Topic 1: The Basics & Foundational Types
Topic 2: Control Flow
Topic 3: Optionals
Topic 5: Classes
Topic 6: Structs
Topic 7: Enums
Topic 8: Value Types & Reference Types
Topic 9: ARC (Automatic Reference Counting)
Mid-level Topics
Topic 10: Extensions
Topic 11: Protocols
Topic 12: Concurrency
Topic 13: Error Handling
Topic 14: Generics
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Swift Career Tips 🚀
Also, as an additional bit of help 3DaysOfSwift has outlined a few career tips that might help as you start your journey as an iOS Developer applying for jobs writing software for Apple devices.
Tips 🚀
Below we have included a few career tips to help get you started as a Junior iOS Developer working in the tech industry.
Focus on learning the Swift language itself. Most team members start their learning journey by studying Xcode and building apps. It's a lot of information and plenty to get confused about. Most of your colleagues will have many gaps in knowledge that affect their every-day anxiety with completing tasks and having it reviewed by others. Instead, why not become the one of the reviewers? Our advice is to stand out in the tech industry and if you want to stand out I would suggest becoming very knowledgable about the language itself; Every single developer will be using it and they will all be competing over Architecture and not the best use of language features. Armed with an incredible understanding of the language you will have the confidence in knowing you can maintain any existing product on the market.
Gather "Career Things" like they were collectibles in a game. This easy-to-remember and rather broad term is a great bit of advice. Too many engineers let the months go by without really taking on board many exciting projects or doing anything that wows any one. This is a terrible idea in every way. Stand out. Be the best at something (like understanding the language). When you change positions and apply to a different company you will have an interview and they'll grill you with many questions. The main bits to know are these; Your CV gets you the interview. You display your worth in the interview.
Your CV gets you the interview: Your short 2 page bullet-pointed CV is simply a list of amazing things you did to improve the team, the social element, the code quality, the income, how you increased user retention, how you added a successful feature and improved the app. You must collect career things.
You display worth in the interview: In the interview you want to fill the hour with saying similar phrases non-stop to "I was able to tweak the values and affect the income of the product simply by reducing the friction of the onboarding and providing a more seamless and pleasant user experience for the user. We now have only a 14% drop compared to most companies that have around 30% typically." Notice how you use "we" when referring to your current company in interviews. To simplify the phrase just-used, "I helped my company move forward. I improved the product, which led to an increased user experience and ultimately more profits for the company. I am a team player and I will improve your company at every opportunity possible."
Become confident in Interviews. You are now a talented Swift engineer who understands the Swift language and has a list of successful results you can pull out of the bag and discuss and any interview. You are constantly and infinitely talking about specifics of the Swift language and how cool and useful it is. You are stacking up one example after another of how you affected the results of the team and the company. You are great at telling these stories. The world is your oyster and you can be confident in your abilities as well as your choices in life.
Move company every 2 years. Ask for a £10,000 increase. When you become bored at your current job because you know too much think about moving, upgrading your job title and doubling your annual salary.
Be driven and be proud that you help keep the world moving by maintaining the digital services we all love and are constantly glued to.
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