What is Coding Assessment? Everything you need to know

What is Coding Assessment?

When it comes to the technology adoption process, the importance of coding assessment cannot be underestimated. Coding assessment is a method of assessing an individual's technical talent.

Coding assessments come in many forms. You can build it in-house or use an existing platform. These can be multiple-choice or complex questions that take up to a week to complete.

Of course, there are many ways to skin a cat, but the ultimate goal is to get a score for each applicant that can be used to compare and contrast developers. These results can then be combined with other hiring criteria such as salary, communication skills and industry experience to hire the best candidates for your company.

Benefits of Coding Assessment

• Optimal use of organisational resources: Generally, the hiring process in any industry is long and tedious. Using the right technical screening tools will create a more efficient recruitment process, thus can reduce the burden on employees.

• Retaining qualified personnel: Employees with highly specialised skills know there is no shortage of opportunities. A well-built coding assessment platform provides early recognition of potential candidates' skills.

• Scientific hiring procedure: Coding assessment practices ensure that choices are made based on solid facts and data. This means there is a proper and structured way to find the right talent by eliminating arbitrary methods that don't paint an accurate picture.

• Unbiased selection: It is all too common for managers and employers to select candidates based on positive interactions, smooth communication and shared interests. Unfortunately, this can result in organizations picking the wrong people to fill vacancies. Assessing coding skills can help companies make better decisions when managing the hiring process.

Significance of Coding Assessments

• Avoid Bad Hiring Decisions: Even if candidates have theoretical knowledge, they may lack practical skills. Conducting a coding test online prior to hiring decisions can prove beneficial for businesses to avoid bad hiring practices.

• Get The Right Talent: Hiring managers receive a ton of resumes. Coding assessments help recruiters assess a candidate's subject matter expertise and coding ability, ultimately helping them onboard the right talent.

• Narrow Down The Search: With coding assessments, only suitable candidates will advance to the next selection stage. This also helps shorten the entire selection and hiring process.

Things To Look For In Your Coding Assessment Tool

• Rich library of questions: A good coding assessment tool offers a wide range of programming languages (JAVA interview questions, C interview questions, etc. included) ​​and frameworks and tests both modern and traditional programming skills as well as all developer roles, whether frontend or backend.

• Automated invigilation with proctor settings: When hiring remotely, it is impossible to closely monitor candidates during testing. A powerful coding assessment tool offers automatic monitoring through appropriate settings. A proctor allows candidates to be monitored via video during the test to protect the quality of the assessment.

Automated scoring tools should also report tab switching, prevent code copying and use image processing to eliminate spoofing candidates.

• Grading based on standard evaluation parameters: We always recommend conducting structured interviews to ensure the hiring process is fair and impartial. One way to do this is to score each candidate against standardised parameters to maintain scoring objectives. An automatically generated scoring report at the end of scoring makes it easy and fast to see who progressed to the next round and who fell out.

This also keeps candidates informed at every stage of the hiring lifecycle by allowing them to be updated in real-time.

• Automated performance reports: Each coding testing platform provides detailed analysis and insight into candidate skills with aggregated and automatically generated performance reports. Top performers can be identified on the fly and scrutinised based on work experience and other relevant criteria.

How Do MeritTrac Coding Assessments Help You Make The Difference?

MeritTrac's coding assessment tests are great first-level screening tests. They’re especially useful for campus drives and walk-ins, where hundreds of new graduates are expected to be interviewed. The online coding test platform automatically evaluates responses and provides results with short processing times. Candidates who pass the first-level coding test can then be invited to take the next-level programming test.

You can also record coding test results to create a passive talent pool. Hiring teams can retain them for future positions or move talent to other profiles based on competence. Reports generated by automated testing help recruiters navigate the selection process.

Conclusion

We all know why coding assessments have become an essential recruiting tool. Recruiting top-notch developers is extremely difficult and at risk of staffing shortages, so a coding assessment platform is essential for most growing technology teams today.

FAQs:

1. Why is coding assessment important?

A coding test indicates whether an applicant meets the mandatory standards and requirements for the position. By conducting a thorough technical assessment at the beginning, the next process will be a successfully smooth process. Therefore, coding assessments work best when part of a technical screening.

2. How do online coding assessments work?

An online coding assessment as part of your screening effort is a relatively short process that begins early in the hiring process. Accurate performance overviews and likelihood-based analysis can therefore help assess a candidate's knowledge rather than who they are, thus one can gain quality hires.

3. How can coding help in problem-solving skills?

Writing computer programs to solve problems is a hands-on process of making mistakes, testing your work and correcting your mistakes. Coding also breaks down complex concepts and problems into manageable steps to facilitate a better understanding of the problem.

4. How can I improve my coding assessment?

Once you understand the basics of coding, one of the best ways to improve your coding and programming skills is to just practice. By applying your knowledge and challenging yourself, you can grow significantly without reading books or attending lectures. If you want to improve your coding, you have to spend time coding.