pre-hiring online assessment testing tool, anyone?
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Use an agent to pre-screen you tightwad. In any case anything they can do online that can cheat at. I'd want to hire the cheats: the ones that don't cheat are only good at passign tests: they have no initiative or gumption. Or just call them in and set them a rudimentary task: here are 3 (populated and related) tables. Present the data in a grid in one hour. Beats dumb technical questiopns which only prove a good memory, not skill. Where are you in London?
I agree with everything said here:
digital man wrote:
Use an agent to pre-screen you tightwad. In any case anything they can do online that can cheat at.
But nothing said here:
digital man wrote:
I'd want to hire the cheats: the ones that don't cheat are only good at passign tests: they have no initiative or gumption.
Given that you are trying to hire good developers, allowing them to "cheat" (i.e. get stuff off the internet) in an at-home scenario doesn't give you any idea of how good they actually are, because their whole response could be garnered from the internet. You are better giving a programming test at the interview stage, but allow the user access to the Internet (so they can look stuff up) and have a developer in the room who can provide guidance. Tell the interviewee this is allowed, but don't allow the developer to give them a full solution, only guidance on specific points. A really good developer might not need to use either, but it is a good sign if they are perpared to look stuff up via google or discuss the project with the person. Also, it is a bad sign if they cobble stuff together from the Internet (as one interviewee did where I work!) To screen the total non-starters, I'd conduct a quick technical interview over the phone. Ask questions which should be easy for the level of developer you are hiring. You'll be shocked by how many poor answers you'll get. I've heard of interviewees who were candidates for senior developer positions who couldn't explain the difference between an interface or a class for example and who had no concept of OO. You could of course just hire me (reasonable offers accepted) :)
CCC solved so far: 2 (including a Hard One!)
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Hi, We are hiring senior ASP.NET developers in London and we are getting lot of CVs! We are looking to ask the candidates to apply for an online assessment test for ASP.NET 2.0/3.5 and C#. Do you recommend any online assessment service that tests ASP.NET/C# skills? I found some but their questions are not up-to-date and sometimes the questions are not that good (I know that I can make my own questions, but I don't have the tiem for that!). Regards, Adam Tibi
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
What questions to ask is the easy part. How do you ensure that the person who answers the questions online, is the one that you end up interviewing?
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra]
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Use an agent to pre-screen you tightwad. In any case anything they can do online that can cheat at. I'd want to hire the cheats: the ones that don't cheat are only good at passign tests: they have no initiative or gumption. Or just call them in and set them a rudimentary task: here are 3 (populated and related) tables. Present the data in a grid in one hour. Beats dumb technical questiopns which only prove a good memory, not skill. Where are you in London?
digital man wrote:
the ones that don't cheat are only good at passign tests: they have no initiative or gumption.
Are you Mr.Berlusconi's relative? :~ :rolleyes:
If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
[My articles] -
I agree with everything said here:
digital man wrote:
Use an agent to pre-screen you tightwad. In any case anything they can do online that can cheat at.
But nothing said here:
digital man wrote:
I'd want to hire the cheats: the ones that don't cheat are only good at passign tests: they have no initiative or gumption.
Given that you are trying to hire good developers, allowing them to "cheat" (i.e. get stuff off the internet) in an at-home scenario doesn't give you any idea of how good they actually are, because their whole response could be garnered from the internet. You are better giving a programming test at the interview stage, but allow the user access to the Internet (so they can look stuff up) and have a developer in the room who can provide guidance. Tell the interviewee this is allowed, but don't allow the developer to give them a full solution, only guidance on specific points. A really good developer might not need to use either, but it is a good sign if they are perpared to look stuff up via google or discuss the project with the person. Also, it is a bad sign if they cobble stuff together from the Internet (as one interviewee did where I work!) To screen the total non-starters, I'd conduct a quick technical interview over the phone. Ask questions which should be easy for the level of developer you are hiring. You'll be shocked by how many poor answers you'll get. I've heard of interviewees who were candidates for senior developer positions who couldn't explain the difference between an interface or a class for example and who had no concept of OO. You could of course just hire me (reasonable offers accepted) :)
CCC solved so far: 2 (including a Hard One!)
I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek for that bit: sorry if that wasn't obvious (my wife tells me I have a 'strange' sense of humour - Ihave no idea what she means).
keefb wrote:
To screen the total non-starters, I'd conduct a quick technical interview over the phone. Ask questions which should be easy for the level of developer you are hiring. You'll be shocked by how many poor answers you'll get. I've heard of interviewees who were candidates for senior developer positions who couldn't explain the difference between an interface or a class for example and who had no concept of OO.
This is what the agency should be doing. My daughter is an agent (Grr) and she holds assesment centers where candidates come in and take group tests/interviews or somesuch. She then whittles down to 2 or 3 good candidates which get put forward to the employer. Seems to work well.
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digital man wrote:
the ones that don't cheat are only good at passign tests: they have no initiative or gumption.
Are you Mr.Berlusconi's relative? :~ :rolleyes:
If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
[My articles]See above: was attempting humour.
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Hi, We are hiring senior ASP.NET developers in London and we are getting lot of CVs! We are looking to ask the candidates to apply for an online assessment test for ASP.NET 2.0/3.5 and C#. Do you recommend any online assessment service that tests ASP.NET/C# skills? I found some but their questions are not up-to-date and sometimes the questions are not that good (I know that I can make my own questions, but I don't have the tiem for that!). Regards, Adam Tibi
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
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What questions to ask is the easy part. How do you ensure that the person who answers the questions online, is the one that you end up interviewing?
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra]
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I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek for that bit: sorry if that wasn't obvious (my wife tells me I have a 'strange' sense of humour - Ihave no idea what she means).
keefb wrote:
To screen the total non-starters, I'd conduct a quick technical interview over the phone. Ask questions which should be easy for the level of developer you are hiring. You'll be shocked by how many poor answers you'll get. I've heard of interviewees who were candidates for senior developer positions who couldn't explain the difference between an interface or a class for example and who had no concept of OO.
This is what the agency should be doing. My daughter is an agent (Grr) and she holds assesment centers where candidates come in and take group tests/interviews or somesuch. She then whittles down to 2 or 3 good candidates which get put forward to the employer. Seems to work well.
Apologies, the irony-dar's valves haven't warmed up.
digital man wrote:
This is what the agency should be doing.
This is Interesting, I've never been asked such questions by the agency (though they should)! The agencies I've used (in Newcastle) seem to rely upon feedback from the previous interview.
CCC solved so far: 2 (including a Hard One!)
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Apologies, the irony-dar's valves haven't warmed up.
digital man wrote:
This is what the agency should be doing.
This is Interesting, I've never been asked such questions by the agency (though they should)! The agencies I've used (in Newcastle) seem to rely upon feedback from the previous interview.
CCC solved so far: 2 (including a Hard One!)
If you want a decent agency contact me off-line and I can recommend a couple of decent ones. Yes, there are some decent ones contrary to popular belief/experience.
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If you want a decent agency contact me off-line and I can recommend a couple of decent ones. Yes, there are some decent ones contrary to popular belief/experience.
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Decent recruiting angent? Here in UK? Have a look at my blog post :) UK Software Consultant Nightmare The IT Recruiting Agents[^]
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Your blog item would compliment my short series of articles on 'Contracting for Dummies' posted here quite nicely. However, whilst everything you say is true my last 2 agents have broken that mould and I would recommend them. Note, by the way, that asking for references is quite an old sales tactic from the insurance industry. They are taught to ask for 5 people at the end of every pitch/sale that they can contact through you as recommendations. If you don't ask you don't get.
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If you want a decent agency contact me off-line and I can recommend a couple of decent ones. Yes, there are some decent ones contrary to popular belief/experience.
Might well do, but not from work :)
CCC solved so far: 2 (including a Hard One!)
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Decent recruiting angent? Here in UK? Have a look at my blog post :) UK Software Consultant Nightmare The IT Recruiting Agents[^]
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Do they help migrant Saffers?
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I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek for that bit: sorry if that wasn't obvious (my wife tells me I have a 'strange' sense of humour - Ihave no idea what she means).
keefb wrote:
To screen the total non-starters, I'd conduct a quick technical interview over the phone. Ask questions which should be easy for the level of developer you are hiring. You'll be shocked by how many poor answers you'll get. I've heard of interviewees who were candidates for senior developer positions who couldn't explain the difference between an interface or a class for example and who had no concept of OO.
This is what the agency should be doing. My daughter is an agent (Grr) and she holds assesment centers where candidates come in and take group tests/interviews or somesuch. She then whittles down to 2 or 3 good candidates which get put forward to the employer. Seems to work well.
digital man wrote:
This is what the agency should be doing
No, not here in Sydney. Employment agents are not programmers, and they are not capable of conducting technical interviews. If the whole point is to make elimination and save your time, you can use, as example http://www.brainbench.com/[^]/ You'll have to pay for their service. Will it have false positives or negatives? Of cause, as others here are saying. But the site puts 3 min time-out on every question, which does not leave much room for getting the answers online. Anyway, either you risk false positives, or you spend your own time on optimising the quality of the selection. I'd ignore such worries: you'll be conducting another round anyway.
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digital man wrote:
This is what the agency should be doing
No, not here in Sydney. Employment agents are not programmers, and they are not capable of conducting technical interviews. If the whole point is to make elimination and save your time, you can use, as example http://www.brainbench.com/[^]/ You'll have to pay for their service. Will it have false positives or negatives? Of cause, as others here are saying. But the site puts 3 min time-out on every question, which does not leave much room for getting the answers online. Anyway, either you risk false positives, or you spend your own time on optimising the quality of the selection. I'd ignore such worries: you'll be conducting another round anyway.
I got a fairly high score with all the tests I took on that website, but many of my answers were searched for online in that 3-minute period. It might be a good indication that a developer knows enough to know what to search for. In an industry as volatile as software development, knowing where to look can be a useful characteristic. Although I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of those tests. They sometimes focus on knowledge that is not common to most programming jobs. A better strategy would be to ask questions about logic scenarios that use an intermediate level of programming language knowledge. That way, you can figure out if developers have the smarts for the job, not the useless knowledge or the ability to search online.
A useless question:
In which .Net namespace would you look to send an email?
- System.Collections
- System.Threading
- etc...
A useful question:
Given a maze that is stored as a two dimensional array, what approach might you take to find the shortest path between two cells in the array:
- Perform a flood algorithm that iteratively paints adjacent cells, starting with the first point and ending when the last point is reached.
- Use a recursive function that asks all neighbor cells how close they are to the destination cell and choosing the shortest of the distances returned.
- Overwrite cells in the grid so that the shortest distance is a line drawn between the two cells.
- etc...
It'd also be neat to see such multiple choice questions have a notes section so that extra info could be added to each question, such as the reasoning behind the decision (e.g., the test taker could write that they chose to avoid option 2 from the second question above because it would take too long). But theory aside, that brain bench test system should weed out those not interested enough to even take the test and those just incapable of completing it.
Visual Studio is an excellent GUIIDE.
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Hi, We are hiring senior ASP.NET developers in London and we are getting lot of CVs! We are looking to ask the candidates to apply for an online assessment test for ASP.NET 2.0/3.5 and C#. Do you recommend any online assessment service that tests ASP.NET/C# skills? I found some but their questions are not up-to-date and sometimes the questions are not that good (I know that I can make my own questions, but I don't have the tiem for that!). Regards, Adam Tibi
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Adam Tibi wrote:
I know that I can make my own questions, but I don't have the tiem for that!
Hire me to make the questions for you. But before you do that, hire somebody to give me a test to see if I'm capable of formulating those questions ;P On a more serious note, shouldn't you find the time to make the questions? Or is your time more valuable than what you would pay somebody else for a generic solution that would be less effective than the questions you'd come up with?
Visual Studio is an excellent GUIIDE.
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Hi, We are hiring senior ASP.NET developers in London and we are getting lot of CVs! We are looking to ask the candidates to apply for an online assessment test for ASP.NET 2.0/3.5 and C#. Do you recommend any online assessment service that tests ASP.NET/C# skills? I found some but their questions are not up-to-date and sometimes the questions are not that good (I know that I can make my own questions, but I don't have the tiem for that!). Regards, Adam Tibi
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
I'd suggest that you're likely to get better results by pre-screening the CVs yourselves first (get the senior staff on the team together to do this. Lots of coffee and an eye for detail), then by conducting a short phone interview with the candidates which remain. That will wittle the pile down very significantly. Those who you don't weed out at stage 1 or 2 come in for face to face interviews. Rationalle: The best candidates won't jump through hoops for you, and may not even bother doing a pre-test if asked (I know I probably wouldn't!). They will however tend to have decent CVs and react well to an opportunity to talk about your needs and their skills and experience to a potential employer.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Hi, We are hiring senior ASP.NET developers in London and we are getting lot of CVs! We are looking to ask the candidates to apply for an online assessment test for ASP.NET 2.0/3.5 and C#. Do you recommend any online assessment service that tests ASP.NET/C# skills? I found some but their questions are not up-to-date and sometimes the questions are not that good (I know that I can make my own questions, but I don't have the tiem for that!). Regards, Adam Tibi
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
The Activity Vector Analysis (AVA) is by far the best tool a company can use (when performed by appropriate and well-trained personnel). For a few hundred bucks per person, it is the BEST tool to select and place ALL candidates no matter what job they will be performing. Why would any company waste their time with anything else is mind-boggling.
David
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Hi, We are hiring senior ASP.NET developers in London and we are getting lot of CVs! We are looking to ask the candidates to apply for an online assessment test for ASP.NET 2.0/3.5 and C#. Do you recommend any online assessment service that tests ASP.NET/C# skills? I found some but their questions are not up-to-date and sometimes the questions are not that good (I know that I can make my own questions, but I don't have the tiem for that!). Regards, Adam Tibi
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
They are a waste of my time and only serve as a tool to get liars further in the process. If you want something quick put a web service on your server and only accept resumes through the web service. It will eliminate 99% of your candidates and unlike automated assessments a competent candidate may just take the 30 seconds required to submit.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." --Stephen Crane