Creation of Take Home Coding Challenges

While behavioral interviews will always have a place for assessing soft skills, take-home coding challenges have become very popular components of technical interviews over the past decade. And while there is a lot of information about what such tasks can look like, very little is known about the methodology by which employers develop a challenge.

Because every role and every company is unique, there's no exact formula for creating one, but these general tips can help you get a feel for it.

Define goals beforehand

Is there a specific skill you would like to assess? Are there multiple skills that the candidate must have? Are you particularly interested in how candidates react to certain tasks?

Set clear expectations for what you want to evaluate. You can also ensure that these are not already covered in other elements of the interview process. This way you can avoid redundancy and get the most actionable information from the process.

Here are some things you can learn about candidates through a coding task:

• Can they write code? (Yes, that should go without saying. Unfortunately, sometimes this is not the case.)
• How do you approach a problem?
• What do they do when they get stuck?
• Are they methodical? Carefully? Experimental? Careful?
• Do they leave documentation supporting the collaboration?
• Do they do QA testing?
• Do they reflect?

Make results quantifiable

Note that some of the skills you measure may be subjective. Therefore, create an interview scorecard so that you can evaluate the candidates and fairly compare your results in terms of architecture, clarity, code quality, UX, or any other applicable criteria. Setting the success metrics upfront ensures you don't compromise when you reach your decision-making process.

Make it applicable to your business

Candidates try to judge you the same way you judge them. Show them what it's really like to work there with a realistic example of what might happen on the job.

Many companies allow the candidate to build a function based on a real product. Others describe a real problem they faced (or are facing) using real or sham data related to their business. Whatever you do, make sure you can provide the candidate with a clear README with the context of the case and the problem they are working on.

Minimize dependencies

Remember that you should try to understand how a candidate thinks rather than insisting on fully solving a problem.

A multi-step solution should ensure that missing a step does not affect the candidate's performance in the next. This approach will result in a better outcome and a clearer picture of their capabilities for you.

Consider a soft skill requirement

An important element of the process is understanding how the candidate will interact with others on the team.

Why did they approach the problem in a certain way? Can they verbally present their process clearly and concisely? How do you deal with other people's questions?

All of these things can help you ensure the candidate has the right behavioral structure for your team/company.

Limit the time

Almost anyone could solve a problem given enough time, but in the real world there are many deadlines. They want candidates who can adjust quickly to new deadlines. Set a limited amount of time for the challenge.

A common way to do this is to send the challenge with a specific due date and time. The length of time should reflect job expectations and depend on the challenge.

Keep the work that needs to be done under 8 hours. They also want to respect applicants' time and make the process fair. After all, they still check whether they even want to work for you!