As any successful hiring manager knows, you must constantly evaluate and update your hiring process to find the right candidate.

In the tech sphere, this means maximizing the technical assessment platforms and tech screening inventories available to help.

With more appearing all the time as the industry continues to boom, it’s crucial to find aptitude tests and quizzes that give you firsthand insight into each candidate’s abilities related to the job.

Here’s everything you need to know to improve your technical assessment tests and find those top-notch candidates with the skills you need.

Choose Tests That Assess the Skills You’re Looking For

Thankfully, today’s tech assessments range from broad to niche. Whether you’re in the market for a software engineer or programmer, there are plenty of aptitude tests designed to help assess each candidate’s skills.

The first step in improving your technical assessments is to be specific: you must test for the skills you’re looking for.

Rather than settle for a run-of-the-mill aptitude test, the recruitment process begins by being clear about the job role. It’s important to understand and clarify the corresponding skillset and problem-solving abilities required to hit the ground running.

The more detailed you are about the knowledge you’re looking for, the easier it will be to curate the technical questions on your screening to help find the best candidates.

Collaborate With Managers 

If you’re part of the recruiting and hiring team, it’s essential to collaborate with those in charge of the position you’re hiring for, as your decisions will be based on what they need.

The job description should be clear and specific about the technical requirements necessary to succeed in the role.

Additionally, the assessment process must be sufficient. Ensure you’re prepared with appropriate interview questions and thorough technical assessments.

Include Scenario-Based Tests

Make sure to have real-world, job-related scenarios in your assessments.

The candidate’s ability and technical skills should be evaluated through problems or questions that gauge their:

• Practical skills
• Communication skills
• Decision-making capabilities
• Collaboration
  
  

The more challenges you can include directly related to the position, the better.

Establish Evaluation Metric

It’s important to establish a clear metric that you’ll use to evaluate each candidate.

This may seem a little time-consuming at first. However, it’s vital and can be really helpful when you’re using a variety of assessment tools and modalities to test your job seekers.

You’ll need to establish a way to score the complete interview — including the skills assessment and technical screening interview test scores — plus any other score based on criteria used to evaluate each candidate.

It’s critical that whatever way you choose is applied fairly to all viable contenders.

Think Long Term

Your company has goals it’s reaching for, and the tech field will only continue to grow and change.

You need tech talent able to keep up. You want those people who are:

• Passionate about the industry
• Actively engaged
• Know what’s happening
• Excited to learn and grow to keep up with the times
  
  

You want someone who thinks creatively and works well with the rest of the team.

Therefore, it’s important to include aspects that touch on this in the screening process somehow.

If you have any scenario-based projects, be sure that each candidate can explain the thought process behind their course of action. This is a great way to gain insight into their technical knowledge.

Additionally, be sure to include interview questions to help you better assess a candidate’s engagement in the tech field. Ascertain if the interviewee possesses the qualities that will help the business reach its goals.

Rule Out Unqualified Candidates

Once you’re clear about the specific skills you’re looking for and how you’ll evaluate your prospects to reveal the top contenders, you’ll need to establish a system to easily find these people.

The best way is to screen candidates from the get-go.

Require each hopeful to undergo a short technical screening assessment when they submit their application. That way, along with the resume and the rest of their application, you can also get a sense of each candidate’s qualifications and skills.

This test doesn’t need to be lengthy or involved. It should just contain an overview of the information and skills required in a candidate.

The purpose of the test is to weed out the unqualified candidates. Those who pass within a predetermined score can continue on to the next step in the hiring process, like a phone screening or on-site interview.

Create a Real-World Simulation

For candidates who pass the initial tech screening with flying colors and have a resume that backs up their skills, you’ll want to subject them to something more in-depth.

Along with a formal technical interview, it’s important that they take an assessment designed to test their prowess.

Many technical assessments have traditional test formats and capabilities for companies to generate real-world problems that include actual tasks, and test for problem-solving skills a candidate will need to know how to perform as part of the job.

Work with team leads and managers to create a skills test assessment that accurately reflects a real-life problem commonly found in the position.

While the technical job role you’re hoping to fill will probably be pretty specific, here are some examples of what you may want to test for:

Code Quality

You should include coding challenges and assessments that test a candidate’s coding ability. Keep an eye out for readability, and make sure the candidate adheres to common standards and other industry best practices.

Functionality

Be sure the code does what it’s supposed to.

Architecture

Make sure the candidate understands architectural principles.

Production-Quality Code

The code should be robust and secure, and contain the appropriate error handling and logging expected for production environments.

When reviewing each prospect’s work, you should look for the quality of their documentation, as this can provide valuable insight into their technical skills.

Use a Hybrid Assessment Model

Some technical interview processes include a few different assessment models.

There’s the initial pre-interview screeding and then the post-interview test, which could include a whiteboard interview.

In a whiteboard interview, each candidate is given a system design challenge or coding problem and asked to work through the issue in real time in front of the interview panel. They must explain the process to the panel each step of the way.

Some tech hiring processes involve giving candidates a take-home project to work on and turn in when they’re finished. If this is something you decide to add, try to create something that won’t take them longer than 2-4 hours.

Before administering the screening to actual candidates, double-check the test’s validity by having current employees undertake each assessment and provide feedback on how well it relates to the job.

Reduce Bias With Clear Evaluation Frameworks

As touched on previously, when multiple means are used to evaluate candidates, it’s important to have a well-established scoring rubric you can streamline so that it’s applied equally and fairly to each contender.

It’s important to remember to evaluate a candidate’s strengths and learning potential rather than solely focus on deficiencies.

As well as a technical assessment covering the skills you’re looking for, follow best practices to find someone with the creativity and soft skills that will elevate the team.

Forget about culture fit and opt for culture add instead:

• What qualities do you need from someone that will add to company culture and enhance the team?
• What skills or qualities are missing?
• How can the applicant potentially fill the gaps?
  
  

It’s crucial that your hiring team is composed of multiple people, including management in the position you’re hiring for.

Reducing unconscious bias is of utmost importance, and your company should abide by best practices like:

• Conducting blind resume screenings
• Holding phone interviews
• Ensuring that staff attend training intended to help call out and eliminate hiring bias as well as bias in the workplace
  
  

You want to consider and evaluate a candidate’s strengths and learning potential, not focus solely on deficiencies.

Continuously Audit and Update When Necessary

It’s highly likely that you might need to update the technical assessment to accurately reflect each new role you’re hiring for.

Rather than viewing this as an inconvenience, focus on what a useful tool it can be. If you sharpen it to directly target the skills and knowledge you’re seeking, it can save your business in the long run.

Here are some ways to track the efficacy of your tech assessments and strive for continuous improvement:

Create a Case Study of Your Results

How well do the current assessments correlate to overall job success? You’ll never know unless you analyze them.

Track the assessments given (the candidate’s score as well as their score in other areas like culture add) and see how that relates to job success.

Update and Redesign The Assessment 

The updates need to be based on the specific technical requirements of the job, and how the technology has evolved since the last time you hired someone for that role.

Involve team members from the department you’re hiring for to ensure accuracy and that you’re not leaving out anything important.

Establish Metrics for Success 

The importance of finding a set of metrics that helps measure success should not be understated. In order to understand what’s working and what isn’t, you need a reliable evaluation method.

The best metrics are viewed from multiple angles: think of all the ways you can evaluate not only the correlation between assessment score and job success, but other scores — such as their soft skills or points earned for culture add.

This will not only help reduce your time spent hiring, but it will also yield high-quality candidates.

Focus on creating assessments that accurately reflect the job description and the required competencies. Additionally, if the assessments capture soft skills and help pinpoint other strengths such as culture add, you’re way more likely to find that well-rounded, skilled employee you’re looking for.

The more time you spend ensuring that your technical assessments directly relate to the role you’re hiring for and the interview questions are designed to look for other competencies, the better the result.

Ensure Your Job Posting Reaches Qualified Candidates 

It’s worth mentioning that in order to access a talent pool brimming with top talent, you need to be savvy about where you post your job descriptions.

You’re never going to be able to hire those rock star employees if you don’t post the job in places they look.

Therefore, it’s a good strategy to be proactive with technical recruitment. Always be on the hunt for job boards that will get your open position in front of the people you’re looking to hire.