How Sandbox Recruits v2
A lot has changed about both Sandbox and our recruiting process since we last wrote about our process just over a year ago. As an organization, we’ve moved fully online during the pandemic (including two fully-online recruiting cycles) and almost doubled in size. Now, as we open Sandbox applications for the Fall semester, we took the opportunity to reflect on previous semesters and updated our process to align with our values and vision for a successful recruiting process.
Our new process, and how we arrived at it, is outlined below. Just like before, we’re talking about our process to set all applicants up for success and give others some insight into Sandbox as a whole.
If you’re interested in learning more about the history of recruiting at Sandbox and our vision for a successful recruiting process, check out our original article. And, if you’re interested in applying, you can do so here.
Learning and Iterating: Do It Again
The standards we hold ourselves to in our recruiting process have remained steady since we last wrote about recruiting. In particular, our goals for the recruiting process are as follows:
- All applicants need to receive the same fair and standardized process.
- Decisions should be made objectively, and the impact of unconscious bias must be reduced.
- Doing well in our recruiting process must be reflective of doing well as a member of Sandbox.
- We need to help candidates put their best foot forward.
- Candidates should learn about Sandbox, just as we learn about them.
Since our last article, we piloted a brand new interview process that we believe tackles the shortcomings we saw in our process a year ago. We introduced the idea of tracks (more on that later), a two-round process, and code walks as a part of our interviews. We’ve learned a lot along the way, and while there were some major successes from previous recruiting cycles, we also noticed multiple shortcomings:
- Our technical challenges tended to be either way too difficult or way too easy for our candidates — we weren’t helping them put their best foot forward.
- Our challenges also weren’t as reflective of the kinds of things Sandbox developers actually do day-to-day as we wish they’d been.
- The questions we asked candidates weren’t reflective of success as a Sandbox member either.
A lot of our reflection was based on feedback we got from applicants and new members, which has been an invaluable resource as we continue to try and improve our process.
With that in mind, our latest recruiting process is outlined below:
A New Recruiting Process
The Tracks
In the past, we gave all candidates the same coding exercise to complete during our interview. Students who had just finished Fundies 1 and others who had just wrapped up their second co-op were solving the same problems. While that approach might be justified for a big tech company, we’ve gone out of our way to include and recruit candidates from across the spectrum of software developers at Northeastern. Students of all skill levels have a place in Sandbox, and we wanted to make sure our recruiting process reflected that.
With that in mind, we created three tracks for our candidates that broadly categorize the software abilities of our candidates:
- The Fundies Track: for students who have completed Fundies 1 and maybe Fundies 2, might be taking OOD over the summer, and don’t have an extensive background in CS (or maybe haven’t taken any CS classes but have a little coding experience).
- The Algo Track: for students who have completed OOD and have either taken or are taking Algo. Students might be applying for their first co-op, just started one, or completed a co-op that didn’t involve web-development work.
- The Web Dev Track: for students who have developed a frontend or backend for a web application, especially those who have experience with it from a co-op or an internship. This is especially true if you have experience with the tools we use for our projects like React and Node.
Our objective with these tracks is to give you the right challenge that best showcases your skills and make sure we’re evaluating your candidacy fairly.
As these descriptions highlight, there’s no hard-and-fast rule for deciding which track you belong to. Each person’s experience and journey with software is different, and we believe these tracks offer an avenue for anyone who enjoys software development at Northeastern to make their way into Sandbox.
That said, when we do place you on a track, we’ll also give you the opportunity to correct us if you believe you’ve been placed on the wrong track.
Submitting an Application and Round 1
An application consists of a Google Form that helps us learn more about you, your background, and what makes you a good fit for Sandbox. Once you’ve submitted your application, we’ll place you on a track and get the first round underway!
The first round consists of a take-home coding challenge. We expect it to take approximately three hours, but you’ll have a week to complete it.
There’s a unique challenge for each of the three tracks, with the objective of guiding you to learn something new and exercising your skills. For the Web Dev track, there are two challenges candidates can choose from, one for backend and another for frontend web developers.
After the take-home challenge is completed, we’ll narrow our candidate pool and move on to round 2.
Round 2: The ‘In-Person’ Interview
The second round of our recruiting process will be a Zoom interview, including you and two Sandbox members. It’ll take approximately one hour, and it’ll consist of two parts:
- A conversation, where we’ll ask some questions about your background and your experience as a developer and a teammate (more on this later).
- A coding portion, where you’ll collaborate with one of our members to extend your work or further test your skills.
We hope to send invitations to join Sandbox shortly after wrapping up these interviews.
How We Evaluate Candidates
As part of the ‘behavioral’ component of our process, we make sure to ask each of our candidates within each track the same set of questions to remain fair and to ensure that we always ask questions that help candidates put their best foot forward. However, to figure out what we ask, we need to start from what makes for successful Sandbox members in the first place.
As the Spring semester wrapped up, we tried something new: we asked our members, including designers and developers, alumni, and our leaders, to describe what makes for successful Sandbox members. A few characteristics kept re-emerging:
- Problem Solving: your skillset as a developer, and more importantly, how you approach and design solutions for the challenges you face
- Communication: how you express your progress, needs, and ideas as a developer in a group context
- Collaboration: how you solve problems with your teammates
- Motivation: what makes you interested and eager to write code and solve problems, particularly as a Sandbox member
- Commitment: we generally ask our members to commit a total of 10 hours per week to Sandbox to make sure all of our teams can succeed and to support members in making meaningful contributions to their projects
As we did for previous recruiting cycles, we’ll be assigning each candidate a score from “Strong No” to “Strong Yes” on each of these axes. To make sure we keep our process fair and standardized, we'll be asking each group of candidates within the same track the same questions. We've selected these questions to help candidates put their best foot forward during our conversations.
What’s Next
This will be our first semester piloting the new recruiting experience for our candidates, and we hope we get one step closer to living up to the original goals we set out for our recruiting process. But, as always, it’s an iterative process, and next semester, we’ll look back on our approach for this semester and try again.
And, if you’re interested in Sandbox, you can apply right here!
