6 essential measures for effective coding assessments

When designing coding challenges for hiring, the goal is to create assessments that are engaging, practical, and targeted. 

HireVue offers AI-powered coding assessment and interview tools that empower technical and non-technical hiring teams to evaluate engineers and candidates for technical jobs and ensure the most qualified candidates are moving through the funnel.

Learn how you can refine your approach to better evaluate candidates and respect their time.

1. Keep it light and relevant

Coding challenges should be consumable and appealing. Avoid overwhelming candidates with tasks that take days to complete. Long take-home assignments can be a deterrent and may not yield the best results. Instead, opt for lightweight challenges that are both interesting and relevant to the role. “There has been a practice that isn’t well-received by candidates—take-home challenges and coding assignments that take 2 days to complete. That is entirely too much to ask of your candidates and hinders positive candidate experience,” said Scott Keller, Director of Engineering at HireVue. 

Remember to respect your candidate's time—because your hiring experience is a reflection of the employee experience. 

For technical hires, we recommend 2-3 challenges in the interview that take 20-30 minutes for a candidate to complete. Also, when setting up a CodeVue challenge, set a time limit on each challenge, and remind candidates that a time limit should allow for plenty of time, not turn it into a race. This communicates to the candidate your expectation of the amount of effort the solution should require. 

2. Tailor challenges to your audience

It’s important to remember that different candidate pools have different needs. For example, your younger talent and more experienced professionals will have different expectations of the hiring process. 

“Choose coding challenges relevant to the position. This may sound obvious, but the challenge used for an entry-level developer should not be as difficult as the challenge used for a senior-level developer,” said Jeffrey Sandford, Group Product Manager at HireVue. 

• Campus candidates: They often have a higher appetite for assessments and can handle more extensive tasks. However, be mindful that they might feel demotivated if they perceive themselves as failing. HireVue recommends 2-4 easy challenges and encourages teams to choose challenges that match their level and provide constructive feedback to help them grow.
• Experienced professionals: HireVue recommends 1-2 challenges for a senior role if you’re using code challenges. Senior engineers or those with significant experience might have a strong sense of their own skills and could be put off by tasks that seem too basic. They also may not apply to jobs with code challenges or become extra selective in the joles they choose when they’re in high demand. Focus on assessing core knowledge without requiring excessive effort. Ensure that the questions directly address the skills you need to evaluate.

3. Focus on core skills

“Avoid overloading your assessment with questions covering numerous technical areas.This can lead to a confusing evaluation process and may only reveal reasons to eliminate candidates,” reminds Keller. 

Instead, concentrate on assessing the core skills necessary for the role. For a web developer, for example, a strong grasp of JavaScript should be your primary focus. 

Focus on the skills that you need to have and leave out the nice-to-haves. 

“If you’re assessing for 15 different technical areas, you’ll only come up with 3 reasons to eliminate top candidates. Focus on what ‘good’ looks like, instead of only identifying random reasons to eliminate candidates,” says Keller.

In addition, TA teams should ensure they know the difference between screening and assessing.

• Screening: This process helps identify candidates who do not meet the basic requirements. It’s more about filtering out those who lack essential skills. Tools like CodeVue are excellent for this purpose, allowing you to quickly remove candidates who cannot perform basic tasks. Then, you can follow it up with a live or in-person interview where you can dive into a more details to validate a candidate’s abilities.
• Assessing: This is a deeper dive into understanding a candidate’s skills and how they fit with your needs. It involves more detailed and varied evaluations to gauge a candidate’s overall competency and potential.

5. Set clear expectations

Clearly communicate the purpose and format of the challenges to candidates. Especially for high-volume assessments, make sure candidates understand what to expect and how they should prepare. For senior engineers, a simple online coding test might not suffice—provide context and expectations to ensure meaningful results.

“Coding is more complicated than answering multiple choice questions. Similarly, you aren’t going to get strong results from senior engineers just by sending out an on-demand link. Communication and transparency are key. Don’t assume your candidates know what to expect,” said Keller. 

In addition, Sandford highlights the importance of clearly defining the rules of the coding test. With HireVue, you can add instructions in the invite or at the beginning of an interview.

"Inform the candidate if internet searches are allowed, specifying acceptable searches such as method names, while clarifying that searching for solutions is considered cheating,” said Sandford.

Also, let the candidate know if they must code in the CodeVue editor or if they can use a separate IDE and then paste the solution into CodeVue. However, remember that allowing an external IDE may hinder plagiarism detection.

6. Diversify your assessment methods

Don’t rely solely on coding challenges, but incorporate other technical topics and questions to get a holistic view of the candidate’s abilities. Engineers who are hired based only on coding skills might lack essential qualities such as communication and teamwork. A well-rounded assessment provides a better picture of their overall fit.

HireVue Human Potential Intelligence offers AI-driven solutions that empower TA teams, with or without technical expertise, to unlock the skills and competencies that best predict success. HireVue offers coding challenges that are baked right into the broad assessment tool. TA teams can mix content that reveals skills across everything—all in one, simple assessment.

Sandford also emphasizes the benefit of asking candidates how they arrived at their answer in a live interview—an easy way to help detect cheating.

“Best practices include a video question after each coding challenge, or a live interview question, so teams can learn how candidates arrived at their answer and help detect cheating. This helps ensure candidates clearly understand the problem and solution,” said Sandford.

Communication skills are crucial, and some follow-up questions could include: explaining their solution, discussing alternative approaches, or suggesting improvements if they had more time.

Utilize tools that integrate coding challenges into a broader assessment framework. This approach allows you to evaluate a range of skills and provides a more complete picture of a candidate’s abilities in a single assessment.

With HireVue, you can design coding challenges that are effective, respectful of candidates’ time, and aligned with your hiring needs. Ready to see results? Request a demo.