Berlin Survey Results — Part 2: Best & worst ways to assess one’s tech skills
In Part 1 of our survey findings, we’ve covered the very first stage of a recruitment journey — the contact with recruiters. Now, let’s talk about stages of the interviewing process and the ways to test candidates’ tech skills.
With the survey’s help, we wanted to understand the attitude of tech professionals toward different types of interviews/stages of the recruitment process:
- Screening interview
- Technical interview
- Home assignment
- Whiteboard interview
- Pair programming session
- Day in the office
- Lunch with the team
We asked to rate them from 1 (“very important and helpful”) to 5 (“useless and time-wasting”).
Here’s what the result looked like:
What we did here:
1.We’ve looked at the number of “1s” and “5s” (“most useful” and “least useful”) and made the top 3s.
2. We’ve looked at the average ratings and sorted the interview types (the most useful → the least useful).
1. The most liked and the most disliked interviews
Here are the 3 interview types with the most “1s” (helpful & useful).
And the 3 interview types with the most “5s” (useless & time-wasting):
2. Interview types and their average ratings
If we look at the average ratings of individual interview types/stages, the overall picture will be slightly different.
Here are the interviews, from the most useful to the most “time-wasting”, with their average notes:
- Technical interview: 2.2
- Day in the office: 2.4
- Home assignment: 2.76
- Lunch with the team: 2.76
- Pair programming session: 2.78
- Screening interview: 2.87
- Whiteboard interview: 3.2
No matter how we look at the results, we see that technical interviews are perceived as the most useful. At the same time, there is a negative sentiment toward whiteboard interviews.
Making sense of the findings
Surely, we wanted to understand what’s behind the numbers that we’ve got. In particular:
- Why are whiteboard interviews so disliked?
- What’s the deal with home assignments?
- What would be the optimal way to assess one’s tech skills?
For a start, a positive attitude towards technical interviews is not surprising. They not only help employers assess applicants’ skills, but are also an opportunity “to see if the interviewer has good questions to ask, and to get a feel for what they are really looking for,” as one DevOps Engineer told us in a conversation.
Whiteboard tests can be quite difficult and time-consuming as well. In general, engineering candidates prefer solving actual job-related problems over “whiteboard or text editor exercises”.
Job applicants are quite ambivalent when it comes to home assignments. They are frustrating mainly because they might take way too much time. Companies should consider on-site tests instead of take-home tasks when possible.
Another problem is that “the tests are sent out even before getting to know the candidate”, as one of our survey respondents complained. Indeed, a home test should come at a point where both sides are committed to investing time in communication. Unless it is used as a screening tool.
Conclusion
So, let’s sum it all up.
- On-site tasks are preferable to take-home assignments.
- Home assignments should not be time-consuming, especially in the early stages of the hiring process.
- Whiteboard tests should be simpler than actual coding challenges.
- It’s best when practical tasks are based on actual problems (that the company’s employees work on daily).
- A mix of different interview types works best. For example, a discussion with Q&A on technology can be followed by practical tasks.
- A mix of assignments OR a choice of equally-weighted assignments is often better than a single test: “if there is only one task, then luck starts to play a role”.
That’s it for now. In the next article, we’ll talk about the most stressful things in one’s recruitment process.
Stay tuned!
