Assessing a programmer’s coding skills when hiring them can be a hit or miss affair but it is arguably the most important element of any technical recruitment effort. More than 50% of recruiters reported that their main challenge when hiring developers was to find properly qualified staff and that the majority of poor hires came from a lack of appropriate technical skills.

They may present with a good resume that lists the technical skills you require but you may subsequently found they oversold themselves. Alternately some developers have the skills but are not particularly good ate selling themselves and you could miss out. Another approach is to examine their programming portfolio in detail and look at their GitHub account. A good programmer must be many things but technical ability is vital. Many recruiters turn to a programming test to get the best indication of a programmer’s ability.

A programming, or coding, test is one of the most efficient ways to screen recruits on their technical ability before making a hiring decision. It has been shown to be an effective method for identifying proficient coders. This is because candidates are required to code their way through real-world problems that require practical solutions and that are likely to come up in the company that is hiring them. Being able to demonstrate proficiency gives recruiters a much better idea of their coding skills and provides an objective measure of their ability.

There are a wide variety of tools and websites devoted to either providing coding problems for employers or offering candidates sample problems to test their abilities before an interview. Tech recruiters can use programming platforms to set specific problem parameters and choose specific languages in which the solution must be coded. Candidate’s responses can be automatically analyzed by these tool and the recruiter is provided with a performance metric that places the candidate in a range of objective measures such as language ability, code design, readability and reliability. Test reports are provided that can be used to compare candidates and create a shortlist.

As well as being beneficial to recruiters, programming tests are often also favored by candidates as part of the recruitment process. They would rather avoid the non-technical discussion that takes place at an initial interview that usually has little to do with uncovering their abilities – in fact it is a way that recruiters can show they are tech-friendly to their candidates.