“Under the Hood” – Considerations While Selecting an Assessment Platform for Coders

• Should the question creator be very technical to create questions.
• Are you free to you use your own data structures while creating questions; for e.g., if only STDIN is available, the question creator is forced to use data structures that are easily converted from a String

• Is there scope for languages like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript etc.?

• Is Read/Write from/to a database supported in the platform using industry standard ways

• This helps the candidate quickly adapt to a new problem solving environment

• Can custom source code be attached with a question for reference / use by a candidate
• Does the system allow multiple classes to be included along with the template from which a candidate starts attempting the problem

• Are common data types like long, float, char, byte and their equivalent wrapper classes available;
• How many array types are supported
• Are common collections like Map, Set, List available

• This helps the problem creator to have more leeway in designing problems for the candidates

• For example, given a map of employee id and their names, how easy is it to sort them on the basis of employee names

• Is Auto completion of code context sensitive and does it work in all scenarios

• Is feedback of the candidate coding style and static code analysis available
• Are customized grading options available

• For eg, jUnit in Java

• For e.g., is it possible for a candidate to write code involving WCF in C# or Spring enabled solution with Java
• How many languages are supported by the platform

• Are coding questions re-usable; ideally they should be outside the scope of an assessment and should be possible to combine a question in different assessments
• What is the depth of sample content available for a test author to experiment

• Support for CTRL+Z to delete the last typed word
• Line numbers starting from a logical number instead of an arbitrary number because of the hidden template
• Availability of common shortcuts used in popular IDE like Eclipse or Visual Studio

• In addition to coding questions, can the platform help the test author combine other question types like Multiple choice questions (MCQ) and other skills like psychometric skills to get a full picture
• Does the platform support rich questions with media elements like audio / video

• In addition to normal submission or time expiry, are events like Window closure detected

• Are features like automatic face matching, multiple face detection and browser locking available
• Does the platform allow a test administrator to remotely finish a particular candidate’s test
• What are the other tools available to the test administrator when an unfair advantage for a particular candidate is detected – live chat, live video capture, live screen capture

• If the candidate is unaware, the test continues to proceed and all the time spent is eventually lost

• How strong is access control and what are the rules that you can impose on other team members using the same account
• Can you restrict access based on various features, modules and data to other people in the organisation

• This might be double edged, as on one side you get flexibility and on the other side there is potential that reports across candidates might not be totally accurate

• How extensive are the APIs; can it pass data to a remote system when the test concludes
• Can it be integrated in a low cost manner to an existing system

These are the broad technical and business specifications that you as a hiring manager, training manager or a senior developer should keep in mind before investing in a technology that is aimed at hiring the better of the “technical world”.

Hope that you find it useful. Think we have missed something important? Comment and let us know, we will try to help you. If you are looking for a solution on the similar lines do checkout Mettl’s online coding assessment platform.