The Nervousness and Anxiety that Impacted a Senior Full Stack Software Engineer's Code Test Performance
To get things started here, I want everyone to know that I absolutely think the world of the software engineer that I write about in this story. He's truly gifted and the experience he had with a company was, in my eyes, a classic example of a setting that was just not to his benefit. And further down in this post, I'll offer up a suggestion that can hopefully ensure that you, a software engineer, doesn't realize this same kind of experience. Let's call this engineer, Zahir...
Zahir is super talented and has done really well in his career and he just entered a job search that would best be defined as "selectively passive". While he is not running out the door at his current company, he has realized that moment where his personal and professional growth would develop better at a new employer rather than his current one. Zahir and I are good friends and I have always greatly appreciated his complete transparency with me and this includes a recent interviewing experience he had with a company. After directly applying for a job, the company responded with an invitation to take their code test. The message came from the company's Applicant Tracking System rather than the internal recruiter and as a result, Zahir accepted the invitation to do the code test that week and the system let him know that it was being sent to him immediately. The next week, Zahir sent these words to me,
Interestingly, I was surprised that my technical assessment didn't go well. What's so weird is that it focused on a scenario that I'm quite familiar with and have executed successfully multiple times at my current employer. However, the assessment was emailed to me and there were no conversations with anyone at the company. It also had a hard timeline on it and as a result, I became nervous and that greatly impacted my ability to access my knowledge efficiently. That was actually the first technical interview I've had in six years so that was obviously a contributor to my nervousness.
It requires some introspection and self-reckoning when there's an experience like a failed interview and I'd love to get your thoughts on this. I have been the staff engineer for our Fullstack team for the past 3 years and I'm always on call. I keep things working. I've built the exact kind of model that the interview use case focused on yet, upon starting the assessment, I froze.
Zahir and I hopped on a phone call and the only suggestion I could offer was that should he experience such an interviewing process again, can he request a phone call or virtual meeting with a real human being so he can ask a few questions before diving into the technical assessment? Think about this for a second. Zahir received an automated message from an Applicant Tracking System rather than the company's internal recruiter. And the message stated that a technical assessment would be sent his way. No engagement with a human being at all and no details on the assessment either. Could that be the contributing reason for his anxiety going into this interviewing process? I very well think it could have been, especially since Zahir had not interviewed with another company for roughly six years.
Scott Galloway and other thought leaders have been talking about the decline of friendships and meaningful human engagements in our society. And this dynamic could be entering the Information Technology industry for software engineers who are looking for new jobs and interviewing with companies. As a result, should something like this happen to you, can you play around with the idea of responding with a message asking to speak with the company's internal recruiter? Simply because you had a couple of questions you wanted to ask regarding the technical assessment? Getting back to the core message of this blog post, if you are able to have a quick conversation with the company's internal recruiter or hiring manager about the technical assessment, I do believe such an experience would help reduce some of the anxiousness going into the first round of this process. At least for Zahir it would have.
As we all very well know, the AI era is upon us and we are going to continue to get a large volume of messages from such systems rather than human beings. If you apply for a job with a company and receive an automated message notifying you that a technical assessment is forthcoming, simply in the name of creating a human connection, perhaps consider requesting a quick phone call or virtual meeting with the company's recruiter? You have my word that the internal recruiter has availability on their end for a quick conversation. You can let them know that your questions are very simple and that the call would not take more than 5-6 minutes. I shared these words with Zahir in our phone call and he said that should this happen again to him, he's going to go this route and see if a conversation with another human being as well as some details on the technical assessment might "chop away" at the anxiousness he was feeling in this recent interview.
In closing, Zahir submitted his resume for a position at a company and received a general message from an Applicant Tracking System. And with no details at all, a technical assessment was sent to him with a firm timeline to complete it once the zip drive was opened. No human interaction at all and this very well could have been a contributing factor to the nervousness he realized upon initiating this interview process. No matter the environment, quality conversations with another human being help paint the picture and the experience is very helpful in many capacities. And should you be on a job search right now and receive an automated message from a company's ATS, keep the option in your back pocket of messaging the company to request a quick conversation with the internal recruiter. This could be some nice confirmation going into the technical assessment.
Not to mention a lower level of anxiety as well since you connected with a human.
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Thanks,
Mark Cunningham
Technical Recruiter
512-699-5719
Technical assessments, good or evil? As a Sr. Engineer I usually hate them, and when I would apply for a job or project and be required to do one, I would sometimes end an interview process because of such. It's an insult to base hiring on something a professional studied in college over 20 years ago and never actually used in a long career, and then be evaluated by a recent graduate to solve a problem in only one way. It's usually meaningless, insulting, and frustrating (as a candidate). However, for recent graduates, lower-level engineers, and having a real need to assess a viable candidate's technical prowess, they are necessary. However, I much rather prefer to take (and to give) a targetted explicit task or sample project to illustrate skills and ability, and then talk over the completed task or project. This uncovers communication skills, problem solving skills, and oftentimes unique ways of approaching a problem, which as leaders, we should appreciate. First, talking with prospective candidates is most important. Sure you have to weed through tons of resumes, and having some automation is useful. And THEN use an assessment as part of the overall process.
I think technical assessments should be removed from hiring processes in general (why can’t this be vetted out by a technical employee if not the hiring manager) but this is so impersonal. There should a conversation with TA or some representative of the company, a base-level understanding of the role and process, and a desire to move forward on both sides before anyone is spending their own time on technical assessments. I think this is happening more and more in TA as a product of the employer-driven and oversaturated market. It’s a way for the hiring teams to vet the overwhelming amount of applicants they get in (thousands in 24 hours) without actually having to go through applications. I’d venture to guess if companies that practice this looked at candidate dropoff before and after this was introduced, they’d be able to determine it’s not effective (not to mention a really yucky candidate experience).
I’m working thru interviews as well right now and have seen this exact sort of nonsense. No human contact, then a timed, sandboxed “coding assessment” in a language or framework that wasn’t even noted in the job posting. For *staff engineer* roles. Total 🚩
It's quite the conundrum. I see why companies strive to improve efficiency in their recruiting pipelines, but this isn't the answer. I recently opened some more mid-level engineering roles and jumped to 100s of applicants immediately. The resume quality overall was extremly poor. Little to no overlap with required (or desired) qualifications, no regard to some clear experience or location requirements, etc. Desperate folks are just shotgunning their resume at every open role to try and increase their chances. It's also a cat and mouse game with folks using AI to optimize their resumes to SEO it through ATS filters, even though they don't actually have experience or real interest in those areas. It takes a human (generally the hiring manager not the TA team member) to suss that out, which wastes a lot of time, driving more and more demand for automated screens of some sort. As far as testing, there needs to be some connection and desire to continue first. The TA screen, and then a convo with the hiring manager to paint a picture for what the actual role is should come first.
Great article as usual, Mark. As an internal TA manager, I will never understand automating this part of the recruiting process. A few thoughts: 1. Even with taking the human element out for the sake of saving employee time/money, this isn't exactly a smart business decision. What happens when an engineer crushes this assessment, the hiring manager and/or team gets excited, then comp expectations, work environment, benefits, etc don't align? When a hiring manager is missing a piece of their team, getting their hopes up on a strong engineer is counterproductive. Trust is important. 2. "Getting back to the core message of this blog post, if you are able to have a quick conversation with the company's internal recruiter or hiring manager about the technical assessment, I do believe such an experience would help reduce some of the anxiousness going into the first round of this process." Lack of prep is SO SILLY. It's so far away from the realistic environment an engineer has in their day to day. 3. AI and weaponized automation have also negatively impacted TA teams with bots. I hate that it has brought us here.