Recruitment in the Tech Sector: Remote Selection and Code Testing

Today we will go into one of the key pieces of the Tech sector: the world of recruiting and technical tests to hire developers. Our intention is to show you the rapid evolution of this sector in recent years and its processes of technification and objectification.

We will start by analyzing the myths and classic problems associated with a recruiter’s job (who is looking for the ideal candidate for a Tech company), and we will finish by analyzing the latest trends and developments in this sector, which is increasingly seeking to identify itself with scientific and technical concepts. For example the case of Rviewer and its code tests.

Recruitment in its Beginnings: Processes and Problems

Traditional developer sourcing processes pose many problems. They have been completely inefficient for years because:

• Companies filter with a simple phone call and without evaluating well the potential of the candidate they intend to hire.
• The technical tests performed by the companies are long and cumbersome, and do not usually give feedback to the candidate.
• There is a bottleneck between the Human Resources department and the Technology department when it comes to validating the technical tests, which slows down the selection process.
• They usually go for a single candidate. As it is a market with a high demand for candidates, if their candidate fails, they no longer have alternatives to turn to.

The Search For The Ideal Candidate

Regarding the search for candidates, with good research methods and a wide network of contacts, a good recruiter can finally find several developers who match the requirements of the job and who are willing to leave their current position.

But this is where the problems we were talking about start: How to evaluate the candidate and not fail in the attempt?

Validation Of The Ideal Candidate: Old School Method

In the sourcing process this is the most complex part: here it is necessary to validate that the developer has enough knowledge and technical experience to be able to fill the required job position. Unlike in other sectors, it is difficult to validate this just by looking at the resume.

At this point, it is usually the companies themselves that design customized technical tests. With these tests they check whether the candidates presented by the recruiters are valid for the job.

The creation of a technical test requires a significant amount of time to be spent on its development by the company’s technology department. In turn, once the tests have been completed by the candidates, it requires a correction, validation and selection process that can take too long, with no guarantee that any of the applicants will be hired.

This is where the new and current recruiting services come into play, more technical and optimized, designed to streamline processes and reduce margins of error.

New Methods For Searching And Selecting The Ideal Candidate

Platforms such as Rviewer, Codility or Codesignal have investigated the problems discussed here and have proposed, in recent years, solutions that allow:

• Streamline processes in terms of time
• Improve and optimize the remote technical testing process.
• Offer feedback and benefits to the candidates taking the technical test
• Find ways to objectify recruitment methods.
• In essence, minimize the margin of error in the recruitment processes.

The Rviewer Case Study In Detail

A clear example of improvement over traditional processes can be seen in Rviewer. This company offers technical tests created by leading personalities from the Tech world and oriented to real-world problems.

These are tests with a storytelling point that allow to evaluate the skills of a candidate for a given programming language or framework. As a result, Rviewer evaluates the candidates through a technical challenge and produces a “Report” with an assessment of their hard skills. In this way, it replaces all the processes of creation, dissemination and correction of technical tests by companies, allowing them to dedicate time and effort only to those profiles that meet their technical needs.

Advantages Of Unified Code Testing

By having single code tests, when a company wants to evaluate its developers, it can have other developers evaluated to compare their performance, or even to contact them. Having and using unified code tests has mainly two advantages:

Standardization of testing: with a unified technical test specifically created to be both attractive and demanding, multiple candidates can be evaluated without the company having to make additional efforts.

Expanded recruitment possibilities: As the technical tests are standardized and accessed by many companies, it is possible to find a pool of assessed candidates right from the start, view their reports and contact them directly.

In this way, a company with an open position can validate the skills of its candidates in less than 48 hours with unified code tests and, in turn, directly access available candidates who (a priori) meet the requirements.

The recruiter’s role here remains important, as he/she accompanies the company at all times in the selection process and takes care of the human side of the contact.

Conclusions: A Sector In Continuous Evolution

As we can see, the traditional process is changing towards processes where the technical elements and the possibility of scaling the possibilities of hiring and the number of candidates prevail.

The recruiter is still an important element in the entire selection process, but the company can also ensure a larger volume of candidates and an optimized evaluation method for each case. In essence, the application of data, technology and optimization in a sector that is becoming more and more demanding.