Designing a Pragmatic Coding Interview [Part 1]

In the following series of posts, I’ll be sharing the internals of designing a pragmatic coding interview that I got to know after interviewing folks for different tech positions for some time and here comes the first one.

🧰 Preparing a repository with the assignment.

Let me use this Github repo as an example.

There are 4 basic rules that go like this:

1️⃣ Make sure to create boilerplate for everything that doesn’t test for the skills you’re looking for in your candidates. This will save everyone a lot of time while providing enough signal to make a hiring decision.

2️⃣ Make sure to provide a predefined automated way of testing candidates’ solutions. This is how you define the minimum criteria necessary for passing your test.

3️⃣ Turn your assignment repo into a template. In Github, it goes as a default feature so you have an easy way to replicate one repo per candidate there.

4️⃣ And last, but not least. Define an issue template that explains the task to the candidate. This one saves you a good deal of time when creating a repo for every new candidate.

That’s it for this one. Short & sweet. In the next post, we’ll zoom in each of the rules.

✌️ Stay tuned & stay healthy.

Previously published at https://medium.com/@fenske/designing-a-pragmatic-coding-interview-part-1-c1fd6894b20e