DevSkiller platform update – what is new? #June2018

April showers have turned into May flowers and those have given way to June’s sunshine. While the sun shines down on the world around us, DevSkiller is shining a light on our platform, adding new features and content to help our users.

To let you know how our user’s experience will get even better in June, we want to tell you about all of the new features that we’ve added to the platform.

1. Record entire test sessions

One of the most important reasons for using RealLifeTesting^TM over other skill testing paradigms is that you can get a sense for the types of the coding choices that your candidate makes.

You can now record entire test sessions on DevSkiller and see your candidate’s coding choices being made in real time. Any, and I mean any activity that happens in your candidate’s browser window will be will be recorded for you to play at a later date. This can be anything from a simple cursor move to vital actions executed by your candidate.

The cool thing is you’ll be able to see how they achieve their solutions. You can also see how they think about a problem, how much time they spend on each part of the problem, and can even figure out if they needed to look up the answers to multiple-choice questions because you can see them pause in real time. Not only that, you can see where your candidate makes mistakes and how many of them are made and fixed before completing the task.

2. Upload images to make tasks clearer

Now when you create a task, you’ll be able to upload images to your questions or static fields. This is in response to some of our customers saying that they weren’t always able to properly explain what to do in a task. So for instance, you can upload diagrams to a SQL question visualize the database structure.

For object-oriented programming tasks, you can also upload diagrams of the relationships between different classes. This is a great feature which will give your candidates a better idea of exactly what they should be working on in their programming task.

3. Rich text formatting in answers

Not only are we using images to help you create clearer task instructions, rich text formatting will help candidates answer essay tasks more clearly. In addition to describing the idea and the question, they can format the answers to more perfectly described their thesis.

With rich text formatting, they can add code or at images part of the answer. It’s particularly useful for any question about code or UML where the candidate is expected to create a diagram.

4. Candidates’ photos to verify their identity

Security is always an important thing when you have an automated test. You want to make sure that the correct person is taking the test and not someone else. DevSkiller is a very secure system with a number of anti-plagiarism features. In our last platform update, we also shared our new geographical location feature so that you can verify where a candidate is when they take their coding test.

We are now taking that one step further by creating a future where you can ask for a candidate’s photo either at the beginning or during the test. Taken with the webcam of the candidate’s computer, this will help you ensure that the person who takes the test is the same person who shows up for an interview.

5. We’re ready for GDPR and have taken extra steps to protect your data

Even if you don’t live in the European Union, your inbox is probably stuffed with messages from companies you have given your email to, explaining how they are planning to protect your data. Despite the short amount of time we have all had to process the implications of the regulation, DevSkiller has worked overtime to ensure that your data is safe and that we are GDPR compliant.

First of all, we have updated all of our programming tests and other content to be GDPR compliant. This is primarily in our role as a data processor since our users take responsibility as data administrators to get consent from their candidates.

In other situations, like when we sign up contestants for our own programming competitions, we are data administrators. For these situations, we have created a fully compliant permission system to make sure your data is secure.

Permanently delete your candidates’ personal information

We have gone beyond the regulation to make sure that your data is secure. We are launching an anonymization feature which means that candidate data can be anonymized. This can either be done immediately by the recruiter or they can schedule it for a later date. For instance, you can set your candidates’ data to become anonymous after a month. You don’t even have to think about it.

6. Upgraded SQL grading

Database tasks can be difficult because there’s generally just one answer. You can do any number of different things right but if you do one thing wrong, the database simply will not return the information that you want it to. And previously, our database activities were created this way on a pass-fail system.

But of course, this is just one way of testing a database developer’s skill. So we’ve upgraded the scoring of our SQL tasks. Now there are four different steps that a developer needs to complete, with a different number of points graded at each step.

• If the task results in the database but nothing else, the candidate gets 25% of the points for the activity.
• If the types of data that the test is looking for is included in the result, the candidate gets 50% of the points.
• If the database produces data the test was looking for but it appears in the wrong order, the candidate that 75% of the points.
• If everything is correct and the data that the test is looking for is returned in the correct order, the candidate gets 100% of the points.

This will give you a much more precise idea of how well your database candidates perform.

7. Single file programming tasks

DevSkiller generally supports full work tasks involving multiple parts of a program, but our customers have demanded something a bit simpler. As a result, we’ve come up with single file program tasks.

These tasks are designed to test one particular part of a candidate’s skills and don’t come with a full project. Instead, you get some idea of their abilities. This can be used to get an idea of a candidate’s knowledge of a secondary skill.

8. We’ve added over 120 new tasks

What our customers keep saying that they love about DevSkiller is how many high-quality programming tasks we have in our coding tests catalog. Of course, the only way that we can keep this up and develop even more is to be constantly adding to our coding test Library.  The last few months have been no exception.

In conjunction with the introduction of our single file programming tasks, we’ve added a number of single file tasks in:

• C++
• Java
• JavaScript

Additionally, we have created tasks for:

• Front-end:JavaScript (Angular, Vue.JS, Node.js, React), Python (Django), Ruby(Rails)
• Mobile:Swift, Android, Kotlin
• Database:SQL
• DevOps

What to watch out for

We are always working on new features to make our product better for our customers. Keep an eye on our blog to stay abreast of all of DevSkiller’s exciting new updates.