How to optimise the Task Round during Interviews

We should know that job seekers use interviews to make a good impression with their prospective new employers. A job interview may be the one & only chance for jobseekers to win over a hiring manager, so they should be their absolute best at it. While there are many types of interviews, skills-based interviews are common, especially if a technical person needs to be hired. A task round is quite compulsory for skill-based roles.

So, what is the task round?

A round where candidates will be processed for the next level based on the Technical skills (coding specifically).
Complexity of tasks vary from Fresher to mid & senior levels.
There are various skill assessment platforms available in market to create the test and which is shared with the jobseekers asking them to complete it, usually within a defined timeline.
An IT Engineer will attempt either to solve problems or showcase their experience level on specific skills which can be – coding, algorithms, machine learning, or artificial intelligence.
Task Round reduces time to hire and filters out candidates who are not up to the Technical skills expected by the organisation.

Various Types of Tasks

Object-oriented programming.
Functional programming.
Procedural programming.
Logical programming.
Database programming.

TASK OUTPUT

Candidate are normally gauged on approach, time taken, thought process, technical skills & their interests in solving the problem statement. Ideally, companies should share the correct task to achieve the purpose of hiring.

Below is a list of Best Practises followed by our team @ Multi Recruit which we hope will help you incorporate into your process to hire successfully.

Incase positions needs to be fulfilled at the earliest, we recommend having 1 module rather than asking candidates to code on mini projects. Jobseekers usually have limited time and hence find it a challenge to attempt and complete mini projects as a task for the interview.
2-3 hours’ time bound Tasks are usually preferred by Candidates.
The turnaround time for tasks should be 2-3 working days and not more or less than that. Expecting candidates to revert within 24 hours reduces the chances of a successful task round.
If the Recruitment activity is to only build a Pipeline for future hires, the best suggestion would be to have the first round as a Task round or during the interview conduct a live screen sharing coding test. Many IT firms have found success during the video interviews and with the coronavirus pandemic, skype and zoom calls have been the best tools for remote interviews.
A detailed email on how to share & attempt the task by the candidates is a must for us. This helps our team internally to plan, coordinate and answer queries put forth by candidates on the task.

What helps Multi Recruit is Detailed Information from your hiring team during or prior to our kick-off call.

What % of Task should be completed for candidates to qualify?
How are the tasks evaluated? Approach to the task or on completion?
Once task is completed, how do they decide on the next process?
Will GitHub or similar platforms where the jobseekers have stored their work or coded links help decide for next level?
What would be the Interview to Offer turnaround time?

If these strategies are applied, then this valuable information can help improve a hiring process and optimize future candidate experiences. There are so many ways for companies to differentiate themselves as an employer of choice, however the top challenge will always be staying ahead of competition and ensuring that jobseekers find your organization better than others.

This Blog is part of a series which aims to answer commonly faced challenges in recruitment.

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