Recently I’ve done a round of recruitment for a 12 month temporary Java developer role for my employers and so I’ve been thinking a lot on how best to determine the skills and ability of a candidate. Incidentally, if anyone was in any doubt as to the harsh ecnomic climate we’re in, we received 77 applicants for this position, normally we get around 12…

Our standard recruitment process is to shortlist based on CVs, telephone interview the shortlist and then get the best 3 or 4 in for face to face interviews. After the interview I get the candidates to write a simple bit of java code, the problem they’re given is to implement a number guessing game, essentially “I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 10”.  It’s a simple task, particularly when they’re given certain pointers in the problem description, but I’ve found it is a useful indicator of the candidate’s ability. I’m not looking for perfect solutions, rather I’m looking at how they’ve approached the problem and how they’ve thought about the issues involved.

So far this approach has worked well for us and I’ve been very happy with the people we’ve recruited so far, however I do wonder if the technical test is entirely suitable. Is it challenging enough or do we need different levels of technical test depending on the seniority of the role we’re recruiting for? Can technical tests be realistic enough to give a good impression or should we embrace the artificial nature of the setup?

I’m fairly sure there is no right or wrong answer to this and veryone I’ve spoken to has had a different opinion on the subject. Recently though, I found out that even Gordon Ramsey uses a similar trivial test when he takes on a new chef in one of his kitchens. He gets them to make scrambled eggs:

The idea being, that if they can make great scrambled eggs, then it shows that they know what they’re talking about and will be a good chef.

I now like to think of my technical test as equivalent to making great scrambled eggs. If a candidate can come up with a great solution or implementation of the number guessing game, then they should be a great developer. Of course, not everyone likes scrambled eggs…