Steps to Hiring Developers in the Technical Computing Market

Yesterday, I described how it is impossible to use pre-existing indicators to judge job applicants. You have to test competence as part of the hiring process. We do this in a 4 step process for developers:

Step 1) Coding Exercise – we send the following email and attach a programming exercise:

Thank you for your interest in a position with AccelerEyes. To get things rolling, we would like to see a couple things before we will schedule an interview:

1) Complete the attached programming exercise (pi.zip).

2) Send us a C/C++, CUDA, or OpenCL project you’re proud of, with at least 1000-2000 lines of code in one or two individual files (no zip files and no binaries). We’re looking for clarity in presentation and efficiency. We’ll only spend about 10min browsing through this and we won’t try to compile/run anything. (Note: If you provide code where you modified an existing project, please provide the original code so we can examine the differences you introduced. We need to see your unique contributions.)

The sooner you send us these items completed, the sooner we can schedule an interview.

Step 2) Technical Writing and Communication – we send the following email and attach for short questions requiring written responses:

Thanks much for your technical submissions. In addition to the code assessment, we’d like to get a sense of your writing/thinking. We have two more requests to help with that:

1) Send us technical writing samples, e.g. thesis, papers, blog, etc.

2) Provide short responses to the 4 attached questions.

Once we have all four materials, we’ll be able to turn around a quick response and, if everything looks good, we’ll invite you to interview with us.

Step 3) Internal Review of Materials – we review the submission thoroughly and grade the quality of code style, code portfolio, pi exercise, writing samples, and short answers. We only invite a small percentage of applicants to an in-person interview.

Step 4) In-person Interview – our goals are to assess culture fit (with every employee holding veto power) and to further assess technical competence through on-the-spot technical vetting.

What process do you use to evaluate job applicants and to test their competence?

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