We compare Geektastic’s take-home code challenges with automated tech screening service Codility.
Considering an alternative to Codility?
Are you researching for a service that provides ‘deeper insight’ than automated screening companies like HackerRank, Codility, DevSkiller, Codesignal etc?
Do you find you development team still do lots of technical interviews with devlopers who have ‘passed’ a technical pre-screen and then decide they aren’t really a pass after all?
Here’s our side by side comparison:
| Geektastic (expertly reviewed) | Codility (machine reviewed) |
|---|
| Take-home challenges are difficult for AI to solve | AI tools like Chat-GPT easily solve algorithmic based challenges |
| Candidates enjoy real world problems (as long as they aren’t too big) | Candidates don’t feel algorithm based challenges show off their skills |
| Candidates use their own development environment | Browser-based IDEs create a poor candidate experience |
| Proper feedback - line by line, human analysis | Uninformative score based results |
| Humans can forgive and even fix silly mistakes | Machines will fail solid developers for silly syntax errors |
| Candidates can explain their choices in the code review | Machines give a binary pass / fail result |
| Deep technical insight into a range of coding skills | High level pre-screening |
| Well balanced review | Bad engineers quite often pass whilst good developer fail |
| Pay as you use | Annual subscription fees |
Do you tech screen your candidates in-house?
- Do you use spreadhseets and have zip files containing your code challenges emailed to candidates, getting stuck in spam filters?
- Do your in-house development team take more than 24 hours to review your candidates’ submissions?
- Are you paying an annual subscription for something you only use now and then (Geektastic is pay as you go, not an annual subscription)
- Does your development team still need to look over the code submitted by candidates on machine based code screening platforms
Geektastic can help you - today
Don’t take our word for it - below are some quotes taken from the web (they must be true, we found them on the internet!)
“A tool that every recruiter loves, every wanna-be programmer fears and every person who writes software, in a commercial environment, laughs at (if they don’t, they should!). And all this hatred comes from a very simple reason Codility doesn’t test programmers; it tests ability to google and use notepad. And I am not just blindly ranting, so bare with me, while I explain the top issues I have with Codility.”
And from a comment within this post “I’ve just taken a test on Codility for the first time and I have to agree it doesn’t test a developer’s ability to code or develop software, but how to rush and throw code at problem even if it is bad code. Not really happy with this sort of testing. It also doesn’t help that they do not allow access to all parts of a language. In this test one of the things I wanted to do was sort an array. I work in Java and normally I would use the builtin array sorting method, but Codility didn’t allow me to access this method.
I much more prefer tests where they give me small task or project that I have to complete. Specifically if they give me a set of requirements and what they expect for a solution and just let me go. I’ll turn out something, maybe they’ll like maybe not, but it’s a better test of my abilities as not just a coder, but as a developer in general.”
At Geektastic we feel passionately about improving hiring the process for both candidates and hiring teams
We know you are busy.
No one wants to do ten coding challenges when applying for a new job - it’s stressful enough going through round after round of interview without spending every evening and weekend doing brain numbing code challenges.
Just as importantly we feel feedback is essential
No one wants to spend a few hours on a code challenge to be told they ‘failed’ with no explanation as to why. At the very least the candidate should be told where they went wrong so they can learn from the experience, even better they should be given the chance to explain their choices and thought processes.
Here are some screen shots from the platform, these demonstrate our philosophy of putting the developer first in the hiring process.
Line by Line analysis
Our expert review team will go through the code line by line and provide detailed feedback, not only pointing our where things went wrong, but where they were right. In some instances the team will drop in alternatives to improve the code to try and make this as much a learning experience as an exam (who likes exams?!)
Dynamic Feedback
There’s nothing worse than having no right of reply.
Quite often we hear from developers who have been initially failed by the review team who have explained their thinking and approach to solving the code challenge to then be asked to attend an onsite and actually end up being hired. Without some way for developers to feedback on the review you risk losing out on high quality talent (and just as importantly, leaving them with a bad experience).
This is why we created our dynamic feedback tool using websockets for instant communication.
Once the review is completed it is published on the platform so that both the hiring team and the candidate can view the review. The candidate can then feeedback their thoughts on the review and actually interact with the reviewer and the hiring team via the challenge. We always encourage the review team to ask questions that the candidate can then answer providing additional colour (and potentially insight into their cultural fit depending on how they approach their response :) )
Below is an example of Dynamic Feedback interaction between the candidate and the reviewer
Are you interested in knowing more about our thinking around peer reviewed code challenges please check out some of our blog articles here
Are you tied into an annual deal with an automated technical screening company? We’ll waive our platform fees until the expiry of your current contract
