Tech Recruiting: Assessments
This blog post discusses some challenges of the tech recruiting process, specially technical assessments.
Recruiting is a difficult process for both sides. The need for software developers nowadays is so high that the applicants can be overwhelmed by all the work they have to invest into the process such as answering messages, scheduling meetings, researching companies and implementing technical assessments.
Some companies opt for not doing any technical assessment as it takes time. I personally think that it is a big risk because structuring and writing clean code is very critical part of software development which is difficult to find out just by asking questions in an interview.
The other option is making a technical assessment which is not an easy task. If the assessment is too long and involves a writing loads of boilerplate code, it won’t show what you want to see from the applicant.
This bring a big question up: what is it what we want to find out exactly in a technical assessment?
Following aspects came up while creating a technical assessment:
- problem solving skills
- work with poor documentation
- write accurate documentation
- follow/implement requirements to the letter
- take decisions or ask on vague requirements
- clean code: naming, code duplication, constants usage, consistency, formatting, dead code
- error handling and logging
- test automation: use case coverage, test data management and accurate assertions
- setup/configuration skills (e.g. setup application with docker compose)
- software development experience (e.g. paginate a REST calls)
- wrong use of design patterns (e.g. MVC)
- accurate usage of the programming language and frameworks
Covering all these aspects starting from an empty codebase can be very time consuming and we don’t want to overwhelm the applicants or waste their time by letting them implement boilerplate code.
To avoid this we created a task with some precise, some vague requirements and a kickoff codebase. The codebase has some of the requirements poorly implemented with a lot of hard to find anti-patters.
This way the candidate can concentrate on showing his skills and solving the task instead of wasting his time solving setup troubles.
What is your experience in tech recruiting?
Do you prefer a technical interview or a technical assessment or both?
What would you add the list of technical skills?
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