Knowing a candidate can do a job is important so coding should be apart of screening. However, if you are going to do an automated coding challenge as part of your hiring process, there should be a couple of ground rules:
don't limit the candidate with things like "you can't use the Internet" -- being able to find a solution without reinventing the wheel is important
don't place a time limit -- that doesn't mean don't time the challenge, just have a conversation about why it took whatever amont of time. Did you use TDD? Did you struggle with a particular section?
assuming you have unit tests in the challenge that validate the solution, don't limit access to the test inputs and don't take away the simplest of debugging tools like writing out to the ui
don't assume that the way the challenge is written will be interpreted by the candidate correctly. It may not be as clear as you think and there should be two-way communication throughout the challenge.
understand that coding is not the extent of a dev job and communication and willingness to ask questions are equally, if not more, important.
I'd rather hire a candidate who will asks questions and demonstrates critical thinking over the rockstar that can hack out the fastest solution without tests. We canteach better coding, it's much harder to teach teamwork and communication IMHO.
Good points! Yeah -- coding being part of the screening at some point isn't the worst. I should clarify that I think that take-home challenges are not so great, and that I think doing the coding in a pairing session over a hangouts or phone call with a shared code env is what I prefer.
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Knowing a candidate can do a job is important so coding should be apart of screening. However, if you are going to do an automated coding challenge as part of your hiring process, there should be a couple of ground rules:
don't limit the candidate with things like "you can't use the Internet" -- being able to find a solution without reinventing the wheel is important
don't place a time limit -- that doesn't mean don't time the challenge, just have a conversation about why it took whatever amont of time. Did you use TDD? Did you struggle with a particular section?
assuming you have unit tests in the challenge that validate the solution, don't limit access to the test inputs and don't take away the simplest of debugging tools like writing out to the ui
don't assume that the way the challenge is written will be interpreted by the candidate correctly. It may not be as clear as you think and there should be two-way communication throughout the challenge.
understand that coding is not the extent of a dev job and communication and willingness to ask questions are equally, if not more, important.
I'd rather hire a candidate who will asks questions and demonstrates critical thinking over the rockstar that can hack out the fastest solution without tests. We canteach better coding, it's much harder to teach teamwork and communication IMHO.
Good points! Yeah -- coding being part of the screening at some point isn't the worst. I should clarify that I think that take-home challenges are not so great, and that I think doing the coding in a pairing session over a hangouts or phone call with a shared code env is what I prefer.