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Online Testing - Are You Serious?



Imagine your feelings if you will be asked to take an exam for a driver’s license each time you change a car of the same category. I will not argue that every driver should know the rules of the road by heart, but in reality such drivers are extremely rare. The vast majority of drivers, driving a car for several years, keep in mind only the key rules, for example, traffic at an intersection. The vast majority of drivers have not had a single accident for years. But it is precisely road safety that is the main purpose of traffic rules.

As a result, the transfer of rights happens only with malicious traffic offenders. When applying for a job, the driver must simply show the rights, he is not obliged to take an exam. So why does the developer have to prove his professional suitability every time? Someone will say that not every programmer has certificates (an analogue of a driver’s license) and that not every technology can be certified at all. I agree, but only in the case of hiring graduates of educational institutions with no experience, and only if the diploma is non-core. If there is documentary evidence of previous work experience in a similar position, I’m sure that you can do without testing.

In addition, no one has canceled the probationary period, and you can always fire a person during this period if a mistake is made. The employer will not get rid of errors, even if he uses online testing, they will be in any case.

Alexander Zverev: I passed the C # language test. And I scored 14 out of 45. Well, well, I didn’t touch C # for a couple of years, but still, for almost four years I was one of the developers of ReSharper and knew C # much better than the average programmer. However, it’s possible that I’m an idiot, and for all these four years the ReSharper team has been in danger
Source: https://vc.ru/flood/10558-multiple-choice
70% Codility. HR - . , , .
Senior Solution Architect 15- , 5 (, , .) , . - .
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My professional programming experience is 21 years. When changing jobs, I am offered to solve online tests along with other candidates. Repeated solution of these tests led me to the conclusion that this is a waste of time - I almost always get a refusal. For several years now, I refuse to solve these tests. As you understand, all this time I have not been sitting idle, I work all the time and am very effective.
A strange situation is observed, I can’t pass the tests, but I successfully pass the probationary period and they soon raise my salary. I conclude that online testing is an extremely inefficient recruitment technology. Next, I will try to explain my point of view.



As I see online testing


As a rule, during online testing, the candidate is invited to solve several problems related to writing code. Tests are solved in a short period of time. The duration of the test can be on average from 30 minutes to one and a half hours, depending on the number of tasks and their complexity.

Limited time leads to stress and mistakes, sometimes inability to solve a simple task, which the candidate easily solves in his usual conditions.

The programmer is disturbed by an unusual development environment. Typically, this is the web page that the candidate sees for the first time and you need to get used to its interface in the test process. It takes time to get used to, and this leads to additional stress, which means mistakes. Some online testing systems allow the use of the familiar development environment, but my experience shows that you can copy the code and run it in your favorite development environment only in case of a simple application. If this is, for example, an Angular application, then part of the time will be spent downloading dependencies and building, and in some cases it will require installing a different version of Node.js,angular/ cli.

Some tests may look completely stupid compared to the usual tasks of the developer, and in some cases even humiliating. In such cases, the developer may refuse to solve the tests without even proceeding with them. The candidate wonders, “Why should I spend time on this?”

Sometimes there are tests for knowledge of unnecessary technologies and algorithms. For example, sometimes tests come across knowledge of sorting algorithms and the possibilities of their optimization. In reality, most programming languages ​​contain sets of ready-made implementations of most existing algorithms. A detailed knowledge of these algorithms can come in handy if you specialize in their development. But an ordinary developer does not create new algorithms, his tasks are much more prosaic, in which case why would a person bother with unnecessary information? Such tests can be learned to pass, but this knowledge is not applicable in practice and is needed only for solving online tests when moving from one company to another.

You might think that a programmer should be able and ready to solve problems extremely quickly and, moreover, in a stressful situation. It can be assumed that online tests are just aimed at finding such athletic programmers. Dear employers, if you have stressful situations, then you have a poorly organized development process and, most likely, unhealthy relationships between team members. In practice, as my personal experience shows, speed and stress are exactly what destroys quality and leads to new stressful situations. In addition, it is often found that in a company where tests are applied, a high development speed is not required. In some cases, the company cannot even provide the new employee with tasks. Sometimes, a company allocates access to resources for several weeks!Often, a programmer walks around the office idle and is practically not busy with anything other than playing air hockey. There is an incredible contrast between the requirements of online tests and reality. The question arises: why was such a complicated selection procedure needed if the real needs for skills are several times smaller?

There are tests that contain questions about the corporate culture and values ​​of the company in which the candidate is trying to get a job, as well as questions, for example, about the point of view of public figures in the industry. To answer these questions, the candidate is invited to watch several videos on the topic of company life. Are you kidding me? I pretend to be a developer, not a vice president.

According to my observations, the higher the competition in a particular company, the more people aspire to the same place, the more sophisticated and more difficult tests, because these companies do not experience staff starvation. They resemble besieged fortresses, and tests are a kind of weapon with which the besieged shoot back from hordes of annoying zombie candidates.

If the company is medium or small, everything can be limited to technical interviews, easy communication, discussion of favorite technologies and even common interests.

So how do you recruit developers now?


Recruitment in the IT industry is a rather complicated matter, especially for HR specialists far from IT. Sometimes you can meet HR specialists who were developers in the past, they are much more effective because they know the technology from the inside. I am sure my personal experience in selecting developers can be useful, as I served as an HR manager with extensive experience in software development. Using my recommendations will do without online testing. I apologize in advance if many captains seem obvious.

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Are you still planning to conduct online testing?

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