Ways to Improve Your Technical Testing Procedure

Technical testing often gets a bad rap (four hour tests don’t help), but done correctly it can increase your chances of getting better developers. When you really want to know how candidates perform, improve your technical testing procedure. 

What is Technical Testing?

When you give a candidate a problem to solve you are offering them a chance to shine brighter than the competition. You should be giving them a problem to solve or a small project to create in the main language your company is hiring for. By keeping it straightforward and concise you can then allow the candidate to approach it and solve it in their own way, but always ensure the instructions are clear and precise.

How to create a Coding Test

You should be looking to create a relatively simple test, something that isn’t going to take the candidate an inordinate amount of time to complete, but at least rigorous enough to separate those that can code and those that cannot.

The ideal test is one designed to identify the kind of developer you are after; if it is from a front end developer then you should be incorporating coding and UI/UX skills. If you program in Java then you will need to ensure it is a Java Test.

(It might be easier to use a ready made test from an assessment skills testing company like IKM)

The test should be relatively short, no more that a few hours and ideally you should be giving your candidates at least a week to complete it – it may even be useful to have done the test yourself and/or given it to a few of your existing employees as a benchmarking exercise.

What You Are Looking For in a Software Developer’s Test Results

As an interviewer you will be looking for certain key skills relative to the role you are interviewing for, but they will usually include:

• clean, structured code
• appropriate uses of naming classes
• use of standard design patterns
• a reasonable UI
• error identification and correction

and of course:

• something that actually works (has working features)

Why long Technical Tests don’t work

Remember, you are asking your candidates to take a lot of time out to complete this one test, without even guaranteeing them anything concrete at the end of it, so try to keep it short.

Many developers will have to plan tests around their current jobs and will also have families to consider – they might even be taking multiple tests for positions in other organisations – meaning those 5 x three hour tests become one marathon coding session!

(It might be handy at this point to recall how long it actually took you to take the test?)

Reviewing the Technical Test

When you get the assessment back, you’ll need to assess it, ensuring it hasn’t been badly coded. First, does it work? If it does you can then assess whether the delivery has been achieved, you may, or may not, be flexible in your acceptance of style.

This is a great chance for the candidate to sell themselves to a hiring manager. If they can finish a test complete with working code that is neat and tidy, they have much bigger collateral than their competitors.

It is also good for us recruiters to be able to acknowledge that if a candidate cannot write code successfully, then we aren’t going to try to talk you into hiring them based on their experience and personality either; it clarifies the playing field for recruiter, hiring manager and candidate.

If everything looks good, then you should ensure that at their next (or final interview) you analyse the test and results, to provide proof that they did actually write it themselves and to give them an opportunity to explain their style and use of coding method.

Obviously if the code is bad then you will want to provide either the candidate or the recruiter (or both, but bear in mind, we are good at giving bad news) with some constructive feedback.

When to implement Technical Testing

Sometimes hiring managers like to separate the wheat from the chaff after their initial stage of interviews, but there are also some who like to be able to interview candidates that have already passed a technical aptitude test and can get straight down to whether they are a cultural fit or not.

Hiring managers might also want to follow up with a telephone interview to discuss the test before recalling candidates for a face to face interview.

If you have established they can code, then it might just mean a further technical interview to ensure their breadth of knowledge really exists and discuss the technical aspects of the position.

(When it comes to technical feedback, remember the recruiter will always want to know first!)