3 reasons why you should add a time limit to your coding test
Time is money — for hiring teams and for candidates
Take home coding tests are getting more and more popular in the USA. It’s about time, because they’ve been a go-to for European tech companies for a while now. And it makes sense; our increasingly globalized talent market demands an elegant solution to finding and assessing technical talent around the world.
A few years ago, the majority of American tech jobs could be filled with American tech talent. Thats getting increasingly harder to do as more and more companies decide they’re tech companies (looking at you, Disney).
According to IT trade group CompTIA, U.S. employers had about 918,000 unfilled IT jobs at the end of 2019. To put that into perspective: With the U.S. unemployment rate sitting at its lowest point in the past 40 years (3.5% in Oct. 2019), and with roughly 60,000 people graduating with an American computer science degree every year, another 20,000 completing coding bootcamps, and only 85,000 H-1B visas to hand out (total — not just to tech talent), we’re pretty shy of filling those million jobs.
The global talent market is more competitive than ever, so using take-homes becomes a no-brainer: They can be completed asynchronously anywhere in the world, reducing time-to-hire (a must for remote-first teams!); they provide an accurate work sample; and, when designed thoughtfully, they provide an excellent candidate experience.
But if you do a duckduckgo search for take-home coding assignments, you’ll find plenty of comments from developer candidates who aren’t exactly stoked to learn that their interview comes with homework.
Their biggest objection? Time.
Thats right, take-home assignments take time — sometimes, a lot of it. Horror stories abound where candidates spend a week on their take-home only to be met with a rejection email or radio silence. Or, in the worst case, rejection and the discovery that their assignment was used in production later on.
I know that’s not how you handle candidates, dear reader. Certainly you run a respectable show. But maybe you’re still wondering why setting a time limit for your coding interviews is so important. Look no further than these three compelling reasons:
- Time limits can reduce overall time-to-hire. Interviewing in the contemporary tech landscape means working in an atmosphere of urgency. So, creating a time limit becomes a necessity. If no time limit is established, the interview process can continue indefinitely. While some hiring teams believe that setting a due date is sufficient to counteract this problem, the benefit of a time limit is that once the candidate begins their assignment, they have to finish it. Well designed assignments should be completable in a single 4–6 hour sitting at most, so if you think your assignment might require a matter of days to complete, consider scoping it down. At CodeSubmit, we’ve seen companies reduce their time-to-hire by up to 4 days simply by setting a time limit.
- Time limits help hiring teams accurately compare candidates. Setting a time limit means that all candidates interviewing for the position will have the same amount of time to complete the assignment. This means that candidates who have less free time won’t be penalized for not spending 20+ hours on their task. It also means that the candidate who unnecessarily spent 14 hours on something that should’ve taken 4 won’t pull one over on you. Comparing candidates objectively is difficult enough as it is. A time limit can make it a little bit more fair while providing the hiring team with a better idea of what individual candidates are really capable of.
- Time limits provide a better candidate experience. Open-ended assignments are intrinsically stressful — arguably more-so than those that are timed. Without a time limit, it is often unclear to candidates how much time should be invested into the assignment. A timed assignment should be designed so that minimum expectations are clear from the beginning. They should also include stretch goals. That way, candidates know where to focus their energy and are also given opportunities to shine.
What do you think about setting a time limit as part of your coding interview process? Share your thoughts below!
If you’re actively hiring developer talent or are planning to do so in the near future, then check out CodeSubmit. Start identifying better talent, faster with one of our library assignments (we support over 40 languages and frameworks!) or upload the one you’re using already.
