Hiring a Data Scientist or Analyst without a technical exam can be a huge mistake. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 Company or a 5-person startup, implementing a technical exam in the hiring process should definitely be a requirement. Below are 7 reasons you should include a technical exam when you hire.
#1. See who’s qualified
The technical exam is the best way to see which candidates are actually qualified for the job. It allows you to test for very specific skills that are necessary to succeed in the role. For example, if the Data Scientists at your company will be working mostly with time series data, you’re going to want to know which candidates actually know how to do this. If you just rely on the resume, you’re either going to be forced to just trust the candidate if they say they have these skills or make an assumption based on their previous experiences.
#2. Find hidden talent
One of the most common mistakes that you can make when hiring Data Scientists is eliminating candidates too quickly. Frequently, companies will discard candidates immediately after the application process based on certain factors in the resume and the cover letter. They do this because they think they don’t have enough time or resources to evaluate every candidate. However, no matter what reasoning they use to eliminate candidates, there’s always some margin of error where they are accidentally missing out on qualified people. Instead, all candidates that apply should be tested, which will aid in continuing the process with the most qualified people. It’s so easy to simply send over the test to applicants and then incorporate the test results in their profile. This way, hidden talent won’t be missed!
#3. Stop wasting time
Most companies move candidates straight from the application review to an initial 30-minute phone screen. By not incorporating a technical exam at this point in the process, companies will be wasting time with candidates that aren’t qualified for the job. Even if only 10% of candidates that make it to the phone screen are unqualified, they will still be exhausting hours of time speaking with these applicants. Instead, you should be sending applicants the technical exam right away. Beyond just saving the hours from the phone screens, you will also be preventing the possibility of bringing along a candidate that might be a good cultural fit but is unqualified. Some of these candidates might make it pretty far in the standard hiring process, but they always turn out as a lost cause.
#4. Differentiate candidates
Some companies receive hundreds or even thousands of applications for the same position. Although this seems like a positive thing at first, this could result in a ton of work for you to sift through. Lots of candidates will probably have similar resumes and cover letters, so it becomes extremely difficult in these situations to know who to move on through the hiring process. By implementing an exam early in the process, you can easily pick apart the differences between the candidates and only continue with those that are the best fit for the role.
#5. Know what to ask
Implementing a technical exam early on in the process allows you to use the results to ask very specific questions in future rounds of the interview. You get the opportunity to dive into the candidate’s results, whether it’s asking about something the candidate missed, or exploring their thought process. Maximizing time spent with candidates is a critical component of ensuring you find the right person to hire, and knowing what to ask in the interviews is a great first step.
#6. Speed up the process
Hiring a Data Scientist takes a lot of time even for the most prepared companies. It’s an important decision that you don’t want to mess up, which is why so many of the interview processes take so long. Yet there are still inefficiencies that can be sped up by testing candidates at the beginning of the application process. For example, many companies decide to give a take home project to candidates towards the end of the process. These projects can take up to a week to complete. So if you’re giving out these projects to multiple candidates a couple weeks after they’ve applied, and we can assume that not everyone applied on the same day, then you’re already committing to a minimum of a month to hire. If none of these candidates pan out, or there’s a slight change in the type of candidate you’re looking for, then you have to start all over again and you’ve lost another month of time. However, if you were to give out the project as part of the take home exam, you could cut out the weeks of wait time between the candidates applying and when you can really begin to evaluate their skills.
#7. Hire the best
Obviously, the most important part of the hiring process is to find the absolutely best person for the job. In an ideal world, you make this decision by having all the information you need about each candidate. But because of time and resource constraints, it’s impossible to guarantee that you can quickly and easily identify the most suited person. By incorporating a technical exam early in the process, companies can drastically increase the chances that they’ll be able to spot the most talented Data Scientist for the job.
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