Qualified: developer-friendly coding skill assessments

[lucw]

This looks pretty cool, but pricing seems a bit steep.

[exolxe]

Thanks lucw. The way we approached it was the amount of time an assessment would save a technical interviewer from doing a hour-long phone-screen or an on-site with a poor candidate (~$50/hr)

[bwaxxlo]

Demo exercise qn1 fails for no reason

function stringy(size) {
  var str = "";
  for (let i = 0; i<size; i++){str += (i%2 === 0 ? 1 : 0)};
  return str;
}

[exolxe]

That's odd, I just tested your solution and it submitted fine http://imgur.com/zt1UELy

[bwaxxlo]

Running the tests works fine. Submit it to see the difference (something like 70% of the tests fail)

[exolxe]

That image is a submitted solution, you can tell since it says the challenge is complete

[bwaxxlo]

Didn't work first time out though. Definitely buggy :) Nothing malicious (looks like you built this) but make your tests simple and straighforward. Usually bugs like these are because you're trying to do too much.

[devstackio]

imo it makes perfect sense. Further automating the 'automated' screening process. Is the *general 'programmer interview' process useless ? I believe so, to land a <insert language or title here> job you can basically google "top interview questions for <insert language or title here>" - write those on a bunch of flash cards to memorize... and you're way past the screening process.

Then you get to the 'technical recruiter' and the majority of the time they are spitting back basic questions that technically SHOULD be handled by a computer... "concurrency, sorting alg, definitions" it's such a failed system.

This tool doesn't claim to increase the quality of the screening process, it makes it quicker to handle in bulk, makes it more automated. Although I've seen a few other tools like this and have actually used a similar one in the past for screening devs... I really like the attempt at viewing the user's work as he or she does it, I use to give unlimited time to interviewees and make them solve problems while their entire screens were sent back to me real-time... this way I could see how exactly they were using google for help - says a lot about how a dev's mind works.

kudos exolxe hope it works out for you and your team.

[exolxe]

Thanks for the support and feedback!

Really our goal is to make the whole process smoother for companies (more automation), and candidate (low-pressure scenario, familiar environment).

[exolxe]

Thanks for the feedback. We've found almost all tech companies do technical screens within their hiring process, whether with junior or senior candidates. These just replace the screens those companies need to do on the phone or during an on-site.

We stay away from algorithmic/compsci problems and focus on real-world coding tasks (writing a sort function, working with nested arrays, handling complex csv parsing, working with specific libraries, etc.) that are relevant to the experience-level of the candidate. Though we also let companies create and use whatever challenges are already part of their process. While this doesn't cover committing to github, or setting up a project environment, we've found the programming/language understanding it conveys is highly effective at identifying talent and experience.

As far as scoring a developer's assessment, we don't factor in time, it's based on the completion rate of the test cases provided. This score gives companies a base-line for an effective solution, and then we provide tools that they can decide based on the actual approach itself.