Easily assess developer talent with Alva's Coding Tests

Alva's Coding Tests is a tool for both Talent Acquisition Managers and Hiring Teams to assess developer candidates with real-world tests that mimic problems developers face in their daily work. And you can customise tests in any language or tech stack for added flexibility.

It's hard to assess developers in an accurate and candidate-friendly way

Not all coding tests are created equal. Yet it's important to test a candidate's technical skills and readiness in the hiring process. In short: can this person code? The problem comes when companies use low-quality testing providers, or apply them broadly without consideration.

Engineering candidates don't object to having their competency tested. They object to unclear instructions, hypothetical problems not related to the role, time-boxed environments, and a lack of communication throughout the process.

With Alva's Coding Tests, hiring teams can focus instead on skills-based hiring, and assess developers on whether they can do the work outlined in the job description. For testing a candidate's readiness, research shows that assessment methods specific to the job – structured interviews, job knowledge tests, and work sample tests – are among the best predictors of a candidate's role fit.

How to use Alva’s Coding Tests

Alva's Coding Tests has four use cases for helping Talent Acquisition Managers and Hiring Managers to best identify and assess developer talent.

Pre-filter candidates through one of Alva's smaller challenges. This is useful for making agile decisions on a large pool of applicants for more junior roles.
A full tech evaluation in the form of a take-home challenge for candidates. This features more comprehensive challenges, taking an average of 2-3 hours to complete, that allows Hiring Teams a complete picture of a candidate's technical skills.
Live-coding or pair-programming, whereby the candidate completes a small take-home challenge and then expands on their work in an interview with a member of the Hiring Team.
Upload your own coding challenge and use the Alva infrastructure to distribute and evaluate the test.

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In Alva, hiring teams have the option to access tests built by top engineers in the field, from top tech companies such as Stripe and Spotify. When you explore the Challenge Library, you'll find a catalogue of tests suited for any engineering role.

So let's say you want to assess candidates for a Backend Developer role. In Alva, you can select both the profile – the type of developer you're looking to hire – and their level of seniority. From there you can select an assessment. If you still can't find the perfect challenge for your use case, Alva can also create a custom assessment.

How to invite candidates for an assessment challenge

Alva's Coding Tests integrate seamlessly into your hiring team's workflows. That means you can invite candidates either through the Applicant Tracking System you're using, or manually in the platform. Both can be done with just a couple of clicks.

During this process, hiring teams can also add special instructions that will be embedded in the invite.

If you're using an ATS like TeamTailor, the process is simple and straightforward. You can set up a trigger, send communications and assignments to candidates, and then progress them through the different stages of the process.

Automated scorecard for TAs, Code Review for Hiring Managers

Once you've started assessing candidates, you can use the Candidate Dashboard for an overview into assignment status and results. Here is where you can also filter candidates by profile or by those whose assignments are ready for review. Talent Acquisition Managers can automatically filter candidates based on Alva's Automated Scorecard, which validates whether the candidate had the requisite technical skills to complete the challenge.

It's at this stage where multiple Hiring Managers can also review the assignment in-depth on the Code Reviewing Scorecard and provide more detailed and nuanced feedback. The Technical Reviewer receives a notice in Alva that a candidate has finished their assignment, meaning they can go in and score that candidate on a weighted scale. For example, the Technical Reviewer could assess how well the Backend candidate fulfilled the provided API, or how much skill they showed in building a scalable system.

Make aligned decisions on candidates

After the Hiring Team has assessed all the candidates, they can make an ultimate decision on whether the candidate will progress in the Code Reviewing Scorecard. For example, Mentimeter used this feature to review candidates' scores and decide which candidates to proceed with.

There's also a field in Alva for Technical Reviewers to leave more detailed feedback in the form of final comments. Afterwards, you can schedule a follow-up review with the candidates you're interested in advancing.