Since I have been working in the HR industry I can understand the problem of hiring technical person specially developer when you are non technical… I noticed that other recruiters also having problems to hire technical person…
I am in search of some kind of software’s/tools that we can use to filter out the right candidates when you have numbers of CVs for the technical position. I found the assessment techniques on some job posting sites (indeed) where they show the assessment after apply for job is this really helpful and how we can use them?
In search I found some but not sure which software/tool is good… have you ever tried or experience any of them?
As a developer, if any job asks me to take one of those tests, I just refuse. That’s not just talk, I have actually done so many times. One time the company clearly really wanted to hire me. I even interviewed there in person. The recruiter was basically begging me to take the test, calling me at least twice after the interview to get me to change my mind.
Imagine you had to hire for some other field of expertise that wasn’t programming, and there were no tests. Let’s pretend you have to hire a mason to do some stonework, and you don’t know anything about masonry. There’s no test or tool you can use to evaluate them. How do you choose who to hire from among the applicants?
Also, none of these tests are good representations of what the actual job of a software engineer is like. They are basically just the kinds of tests I was given in computer science class in college. Someone fresh out of college will have a better score on these tests than most industry veterans.
Companies seem desperate to hire for technical positions. They are always complaining they can’t find people and are willing to pay a lot and hire recruiters to help hire. Why then would you put up unnecessary barriers to block candidates out? Are there really people out there who are faking their resumes? Is that truly a widespread problem? I’ve never worked at a place that used these tests, and we’ve never accidentally hired someone that was unqualified.
Not making candidates do these stupid things will only help you. You won’t weed out candidates like myself. You won’t accidentally weed out people who would be great at the job, but aren’t great at tests. You won’t weed out people who are great at the job, but didn’t go to college, and don’t have an academic knowledge of computer science a lot of these tests are looking for. And you won’t weed out people who could do great at the job, but simply don’t have the experience yet.
You’re making your job of finding qualified candidates harder by filtering them out.
To echo what Scott said, I also won’t take any evaluation tests like that. I have dual backgrounds in research psychology and software engineering. Most of those evaluation tools have horribly written questions, examples, etc. Building surveys is a skill and a hard one at that.
Without exception, places that have demanded I take an assessment of any kind had other red flags indicating that it would probably be a toxic work environment. The best interviews I’ve had have been where I sat down with an expert who asked me questions about my expertise. I’ve been doing this for 7+ years. There’s no way your assessment is going to encapsulate that experience in a way that will also encapsulate it for everyone else you might interview.
Not a software engineer, but I’ve worked in back and front end developer support for in house programming that I can equivocally say that what needs to happen is at least 1 person from the team the position is in needs to be a part of the hiring process the whole way through (after you screen for obvious stuff like typos, missing listed requirements). They have the subject expertise and usually there’s a specific fit and skill set needed for a team/position that they can evaluate on in a way you never can.