Abstracts

How do you get good software developers today in an empty applicant market? This is a question that many companies in the digital transformation are looking for an answer to. How do I find the right employer without having to spend weeks preparing for live coding sessions in interviews? That, on the other hand, is what many applicants ask themselves when looking for new challenges.

Bringing these two requirements together in one process is what a modern application process is all about. In our presentation, we will show you from the company's and the applicant's point of view how we at Schwarz IT combine interviews with exciting codereview parts. This confronts applicants with realistic everyday scenarios and at the same time offers a relaxed and multi-faceted discussion basis to work out different aspects of software quality. The lecture shows by means of several examples how such code reviews can be structured in interviews in order to be able to address a wide range of topics such as syntax, but also design patterns, testing or documentation and version control.

Compared to live coding sessions, code reviews offer advantages for both companies and applicants. Companies benefit from realistic scenarios, the possibility to determine the maturity of an applicant and at the same time to get new food for thought for certain situations. For the applicant, on the other hand, it means not having to deal with simple algorithms and data structures that are rarely related to everyday work. In addition, he or she can use the specific review to prepare for the interview and is therefore exposed to significantly less stress. Lastly, a well-constructed code review example offers the opportunity to delve deeply into topics that are important to the company. At the same time, the candidate can present his or her strengths in these areas and in the end there is no "right" or "wrong" as in many live programming tasks in interviews. This makes it much more enjoyable for both parties and takes pressure out of the interview. In the end, it gives the applicant a better feeling and increases the chance of choosing this particular company and the company can get a comprehensive picture in a realistic scenario.