Re: Skill Testing

Not totally true, but mostly is. Sometimes developers do need to use something like a whiteboard to work through different ideas, 
talking with others to validate and improve approaches.  It is important to communicate and do that, although it should always be 
less stressful and self-conscious than in an interview setting.  Still good to test that independently, but not true that those 
skills are never desired. I would reword the description below slightly to allow for that.

On one large project, an older (than me) subject matter expert and developer could not handle discussion of problems and different 
approaches.  As we worked through different possibilities, he loudly exclaimed: "We will NOT use queues."  (Work queues in an image 
processing pipeline in this case, to control parallelism I think.)  This inability to discuss problems and alternative solutions 
without categoricals and personal attacks was a real problem I kept having to manage around.

Stephen

On 4/2/19 11:23 AM, Ken Ganshirt wrote:
> Here’s a follow-up to the discussion about skill testing for job applicants. The point of this particular article is about hiring for diversity. It is describing how they got a better gender balance but In my opinion would work well for hiring regardless of gender, colour, or whatever, for all the reasons mentioned in this excerpt.
>
> As we’ve already discussed, the test itself would have to be very carefully designed so the candidate does not need access to anyone in the business for context.
>
> ######
>
> CONDUCT APTITUDE TESTS BLIND
> Many companies test technical abilities on the spot. They’ll give you a problem, and ask you to fire off lines of code on a whiteboard.
> The first issue with that approach is it’s as much about your communication and presentation skills as it is about your core coding skills – far more inherent to biases. In the real world, that’s not how you code.
> Second, if you’re looking to ensure gender balance, consider that you’re asking a woman, often of colour, to stand up in an unfamiliar work setting and deliver a presentation to a bunch of men. We used to do it that way, and realized that a lot of female candidates weren’t getting to the next round.
> So, we switched it up. Now, we conduct aptitude tests online, where candidates are able to code where they’re comfortable in their own environment. What we’ve found is now women are often outperforming the men – and since we look at the results blind, our biases evaporated.
> Will they look at developer sites such as Stack Overflow? Will they google how to figure it out? Of course they will. But guess what, when they’re assigned that in real life, there’s a high probability they’ll do the same thing.
> It’s not that the quality of female candidates is better or worse, it’s that the presentation layer is different, and our old process tested for the wrong things.
> ######
> Full article:
> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/small-business/talent/article-women-make-up-more-than-50-of-our-tech-team-heres-how-we-did-it/?utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_source=Tech,%20Telecom%20&%20Media&utm_type=text&utm_content=TechTelecomMedia&utm_campaign=2019-4-2_8&cu_id=hZp%2B6jmyDZx2KMfpEjZOsg%3D%3D
>
>                       ...ken...
>
>
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