Coding Tests and Tips to Crack It

Recruitment is a complicated process and an organization has to do a lot of things for getting and selecting the right candidate. The ma...

Recruitment is a complicated process and an organization has to do a lot of things for getting and selecting the right candidate. The main task of recruitment is to select the right candidate for the right job and at the right time. Recruitment has different phases and management of different levels can get involved in the process but usually, the selection is done by the HR department and the final interview to select the candidate is done by a higher level authority. There are many ways/ sources for recruiting people. This can be internal sources and external sources. Internal source of recruitment are as follows:

• Promotion
• Transfer
• Employee referral
• Internal advertising

Whereas the external source of recruitment is:

• Campus recruitment
• Walk-in-interview
• Through 3^rd party (Agent)
• Newspaper advertising
• Internet advising

There are many tests that are conducted during the process of recruitment like a psychometric test, skill test, emotional test, email writing test, etc. But there is a test that is conducted before the interview that is tough and is not known by many people. This test is a coding assessment and is taken pre-interview. This test is not taken by every organization and is rarely used these days but it can be conducted even after the selection to get more insight about a particular candidate. You never know which firm is going to take the coding interview but you can crack the coding interview if you follow the following advice/ tips:

• Have a carefree conversation: Basically, when the HR will get in contact with you they want to know about this test. You should be well prepared for this answer and other than that they want to know whether you can make the tasks right that you’ve done inaccurately or not. Other than this there are some common questions that you must be prepared for. Some of them are:
  1. The technical problem that you’ve solved.
  2. Any other way you’ve opted to do your last project.
  3. Instance of your leadership qualities.
  4. Situation when you handled a conflict in your organization.
  5. Even candidates can ask questions related to the organization business and strategies.
• Communication: Communicating with the interviewer or test conductor is the best way to take out the elephant out of the room. The interviewer may ask questions relating to your coding and analytical skills and it is your task to impress him by the way you present your problem solving skills. But the usual tips on how to communicate are:
  1. If you don’t know the answer just say that you don’t and accept the fact. You don’t need to give out of track flukes for every answer.
  2. Talk like you’re part of the organizations team. This will give the testing authority a feeling And a good image of yours that you’re thinking from organization perspective.
  3. You should think big about every question and answer more open and broad-minded.
• Unstuck yourself: Getting stumble during these test is completely normal. We all get nervous and sometimes completely blank while the test is going on. This situation in which you feel that you get stuck happens with everyone. The skill that you use here is how to cleverly get back into the topic. The interviewer does not want you to speak fluently in one go but what he/ she wants is how you stick to the topic. Some tips that you can use while you stuck yourself in these situation is:
  1. Just make drawings of related topic when you’re asked to write on the board. This is the best way you can make them understand that you know about the topic.
  2. If you’re given a problem and you don’t know the whole solution at least solve the easier or lighter part of the problem so that the interviewer gets to know that you at least know the concept of the problem.
  3. Apply the algorithmic pattern that are simple and can give you an answer sooner. Don’t try to impress by using a tough pattern which you don’t have knowledge of.
• Express your thoughts: Just make your thoughts on a particular problem/ concept informed to the interviewer. Don’t speak the details from the start as it will make it look like that you’ve crammed it. Just relax and try to convey the crux of your thoughts first. This might happen that you’ll not have to explain the concept further and the interviewer will understand from the brief description of the thoughts. Try to keep it short and simple. Technically you can take a helper with yourself when solving for an algorithm and you should not worry about the syntax.
• Speak up when it’s done: When you solve the problem you can and you should speak up the whole content. This will not fetch you high marks but will not deduct any as well. It’s a sort of revision of the problem that you’ve solved using algorithms. Instead of keeping it in mind and not being sure about the accuracy just speak and revise at that very moment to be sure that you’ve done it right. Any error that is present can be found out by you at that very moment and you can make it correct.

This test is usually tested for engineers and data analysts. This test has some disadvantages that it takes a lot of time on a single candidate. Although it helps in knowing the candidate skills even more but it lengthens the process of recruitment. All the other tests are done for getting an insight into the candidate by taking minimum time and ultimately reducing the overall time taken for the process. But with the coding test, the opposite holds true. The coding test is the most difficult test and it is not suitable for many candidates especially fresher. It gives a lot of pressure on the candidate being selected. The use of coding test prior to the interview is rare all around the world.