When you love your work, your work is never done and at DevSkiller we love our work. Winter is no time to sleep. Our customers certainly don’t so why should we? Instead, we’ve been looking for new features to add to our platform as well as making sure things just run better. This is all in our new platform update.
DevSkiller platform update April 2019
Here are some of the most important things that we’ve added since our last update.
We’ve updated our tasks to make sure they run on the most recent versions of the technology they test
There’s no use in seeing if a developer can use an old version of a technology when they’re going to be using the most recent version at work. New updates can be very different from the older versions of the technology they replace. We understand this so, in addition to putting out new tasks, we now support the most recent versions of that technology in addition to the legacy versions.
En JavaScript, this means that we now support Node.js 10 programming tasks. In addition, we now support Java with Maven and Gradle programming tasks with Java 11. By staying up-to-date, we make sure that your candidates are being tested on the actual technologies they’ll be using.
Our assessments are now even more exact
You can collect all the data you want, but it’s only useful if it’s exact. This is especially true when assessing your candidates’ skills. DevSkiller tests do not simply rely on one or two metrics to determine success. There’s a whole host of factors that help determine whether the developer has the right skills for the position.
We already had a good system but we wanted to make sure it was the best. To do this we have gone back and looked at our quality metrics for PHP et JavaScript. The new metrics that we have instituted give an even more accurate assessment. This means that you get any more complete view of your candidate skills.
We have a new coding test catalog
One piece of feedback that we constantly get from our customers is that you want ready-made coding tests for the specific tech stacks that you use. We have gone back and made our coding tests more easily discoverable for people in search of a good solution to test their developers.
To answer this demand, we’ve made our coding test catalog better than ever. Not only does it look better, but it’s also easier to get the information you need in a timely fashion.
It’s now even easier to add your own tasks to DevSkiller
A lot of our customers love the ease of using an expert made coding test, but quite a few others like the flexibility of being able to build their own tasks for their candidates. In fact, we’ve had examples of some companies putting together hackathons to come up with the best coding test.
There are a few ways that we’ve made the process of building tasks simpler. You can now edit an already published task without modifying the published version. This means that you can make upgrades without having to do them all in one sitting or disrupting your testing pipeline. While you build your task, you can navigate between the tasks in the task editor. This way, you can build tasks according to your own pace and workflow.
Get even more information about your DevOps candidates
We believe that all developer skill testing should reflect the real work. As a result, our DevOps testing asks the candidate to actually configure a real system. When we first introduced this feature, you could see whether the system had been configured or not.
Now we are giving you even more information on what your candidate did during their test. You can now download the solution that the candidate comes up with and the recordings of their activity. This will give you much more information about the types of decisions the candidate made and the actual code they came up with.
You can now use RootSkiller to test security engineers
A security engineer doesn’t only work with static systems. They also need to make sure that a dynamic system is secure against outside meddling. DevSkiller already has a great solution in RootSkiller that allows you to test candidates on a real system. Now, in addition to testing DevOps skills, you can also test security skills using RootSkiller. This will show you how your candidate reacts in real time to the threats your systems faces.
Your candidate can now make changes after they’ve gone over time on their coding task
The most dreaded word of anyone who’s ever taken a test is “time’s up.”. There are plenty of times when if you just had a few minutes more, you could finish your solution. Deadlines are important but a lot of companies want to see their candidates’ full capabilities. It can be more valuable to the recruiter to see what the finished solution is for the candidate, even if they end up taking extra time to do it.
DevSkiller recognizes how important a bit of extra time can be so recruiters now have the option of letting candidates make overtime changes to their programming tasks. They can also separately run automatic assessment for in-time changes and out-of-time changes so you can see if the extra time spent on the solution makes a difference. Ultimately the most important thing is to see exactly what your candidate can do. And arbitrary time limits shouldn’t get in the way of that.
Recruiters can now see their candidate’s Git repository
One of the strength’s that candidate appreciate about DevSkiller is that they can use their favorite tools to work on a DevSkiller task. But recruiters like to see the changes the candidate made during the coding process. Now recruiters can see the candidate’s Git repository so that they can see all of the decisions the candidate makes, even if they don’t work on the task in DevSkiller.
You can now use DevSkiller in Slack
Do you know that if your office uses Slack on average you have it open 10 hours a day. That’s longer than most people work or just shows how important this application is to modern recruitment. So it makes sense that you’d want to be able to access DevSkiller within your normal workflow.
To help you out with this, we’ve developed an integration with Slack. Now you can send tests, receive results, and send messages to your candidates all within your chosen Slack channel.
Track every step of your candidate testing process
It’s important to stay on top of your candidate’s progress so you can see exactly where they are in your process. To help you out, we’ve introduced a number of features that help you pinpoint exactly where your candidates are in your process.
You can now check the email opens for your test invitations. This means you know if the candidate has seen the invitation. This can help you judge where they are in the process. We’ve also added more timeline events for candidate invitations. In addition to opening the email, you can see when they go to the welcome page and when they’ve completed their tests.
Helpful reminders are important for everybody and your candidates are no exception. For invitations that are about to expire, we now have a feature that lets you send out a reminder email a day before. This will help you make sure that the candidates you want don’t fall out of your final.
New coding tasks!
Just because we’re making it easier for you to build your own tasks doesn’t mean that we expect you to do all the work. We’ve been working hard to add tasks that cover a number of the important technologies that you want to test. These include tasks for:
