Javascript Code Challenges: Separating Good from Bad Hires

Smiling female interviewer assessing the male candidate’s JavaScript code side by side.

JavaScript is a coding language used for both front and back-end programming. This makes the language very versatile and essential to learn. Recruiting teams can use JavaScript code challenges to assess candidates and weed out unqualified hires from the beginning. Below we’ll discuss best practices for creating and evaluating JavaScript code challenges to optimize your hiring process and land the best candidates.

What Should JavaScript Code Challenges Contain? 

JavaScript code challenges are crucial in the hiring process for web application developers. Almost every website contains some sort of JavaScript code, making it one of, if not the most used, computing languages ever. Therefore, hiring teams should prioritize critical assessments of a candidate's understanding of JavaScript.

Qualified candidates should know how to use JavaScript seamlessly with HTML and CSS. Your JavaScript code challenges should include the following topics to determine whether your candidates understand the fundamentals of web application development and JavaScript.

  • Variables
  • Data types
  • Expressions
  • Operators
  • Loops
  • Conditionals

Asking for the definition of each of these topics will not fully assess the candidate’s true strengths and weaknesses. Coding is an application-based skill. While someone might regurgitate the definition of a variable, they may not know how to declare and assign a variable when programming. The test could include the following questions to test these skill sets comprehensively assess candidates.

  • Create and style HTML elements with JavaScript
  • Create and style CSS properties with JavaScript
  • Manipulate the document object model (DOM)
  • Read JavaScript code and determine the correct output
  • Assess unit testing with JavaScript

Rule Out Unqualified Candidates With JavaScript Code Challenges 

 JavaScript coding challenge for virtual interview assessments

When implementing a JavaScript code challenge, you should implement it from the start of the interview process with multiple-choice questions on a take-home test. You can also include it in your real-time assessment interview later in the process or incorporate it in both. Since JavaScript code challenges are vital for candidate assessments, some techniques and technology can take the challenges to the next level and elevate your insight. Time is of the essence when hiring candidates. Using these techniques and data-driven technology allows your company to offer position(s) to the most qualified candidates before the competition. 

Automatic Grading

When implementing JavaScript code challenges into a take-home test, it would be beneficial to incorporate automatic grading. Automatic grading helps the recruiting team rule out unqualified candidates without putting in manual effort and wasting resources. The automated grading can present the best grades to the hiring manager for analysis before the candidate moves on to the next round. 

Recorded Answers

Recorded answers are also extremely important for take-home tests for JavaScript code challenges. If the take-home test is your recruiting team's route for the JavaScript assessment, candidates must explain written code and have lengthy responses to related questions. Recorded answers on take-home tests help candidates clarify themselves, ensuring your team carries out the most comprehensive and fair evaluation. It also reassures your recruiting team that the answers are not plagiarized, and someone else is not taking the test for the candidate. 

Candidate Profiles

Whether you implement the JavaScript code challenges in a take-home test or a real-time evaluation, candidate profiles can help your team re-assess their skill sets. As the candidates iterate through the JavaScript code challenges, artificial intelligence profiles will save their code automatically to ensure the correct data is placed in the corresponding profile. It’s challenging to vet candidates and often too many candidates to count. 

Coding Environments

Once your pool of candidates is narrowed to the most qualified; your team should assess their real-time coding skills to help determine the best fit. You will need a coding environment specifically built for engineers and video conferencing when doing this with a JavaScript coding challenge. You should also offer a virtual whiteboard environment to candidates for planning code functionality, explaining thought processes, and creating wireframes. 

Filtered: Get Better Hires With Better Technology

JavaScript code challenges are designed to assess a candidate's knowledge of the language and web development concepts. It’s important to understand these concepts if you wish to hire a successful web developer for your company. 

Implementing automatic grading, recorded answers, candidate profiles, and coding environments can help to thoroughly evaluate JavaScript code challenges while cutting down time in the hiring process. Filtered has all of these and more for your recruiting team to weed out unqualified candidates and offer open position(s) to the most qualified.

Filtered is a leader in skills-based hiring. Our end-to-end technical hiring platform enables you to spend time reviewing only the most qualified candidates, putting skills and aptitude at the forefront of your decisions. We’ll help you automate hiring while applying objective, data-driven techniques to consistently and confidently select the right candidates. To get started, contact our team today or register for a FREE demo.