April 26 to August 2 (roughly 3 months)
This was my first major project at Byteboard after joining on February 22, so I had a lot to learn!
I led the charge of redesigning the Skills Report from scratch. Most of the code had not been touched for nearly 4 years.
I also updated the design system for the client platform in tandem.
Managed project timeline and milestones using Asana.
Technologies used: React, Firebase, TypeScript, MUI.
Background
This long-awaited launch came after many months of incorporating helpful feedback from our clients, which generated the following goals we used in the process:
- Increased transparency into Byteboard’s evaluation system, including more detail about how specific skills are assessed
- Provide more insightful highlights of candidate behaviors, especially to help inform decisions about candidates that require ‘More Review’
- Improve readability of the report, with an updated Skills Map and cleaner, more organized grader notes
This update is part of our ongoing goal to provide accurate and actionable recommendations about candidates.
Preview
Feedback
Huge congrats to everyone who worked on or helped out with the skills report redesign – after a monumental effort, this change is now live to all our customers!
This was a long-planned improvement to our product that significantly improves usability of the skills report as well as matures our code and design practices around design systems, visual consistency, and mobile friendliness.
The new report scorecard is so much better. Thank you for the work here, it makes my job much easier.
[Client Redacted] loves the new SR (Skills Report) format and the Skills Map especially as a supplement to identify interview focus areas for their other interview stage.
Understanding the Skills Report
The skills report is the primary resource we provide you that describes a candidates’ performance on the Byteboard Interview.
It contains three sections:
- Summary: The summary provides a high-level overview of the candidate’s performance, including the Skills Map featured above.
- Design Exercise (Part 1) Summary: Provides detail on how the candidate performed on the first part of the interview, which is a simulated technical design document where candidates reply to comments from coworkers and provide their recommendation on technical questions.
- Code Implementation (Part 2) Summary: Provides detail on how the candidate performed on the second part of the interview, where they begin implementing, in code, the project they discussed in the first part.
The Skills Report is generated using structured evaluation rubrics and feedback from trained Byteboard Graders who review a candidate’s work.
Summary Section
The primary feature of the Summary section is the Byteboard Recommendation.
Byteboard makes Recommendations at three levels:
- Strong candidates are those that we recommend moving forward with and continuing to interview.
- Poor candidates are those we recommend no longer continuing to interview.
- More Review candidates are those that we recommend that your team takes a closer look at to determine next steps. Over time, as we calibrate your Byteboard recommendations, you’ll usually see fewer candidates marked as More Review.
The Skills Map is our presentation of the candidate’s performance on necessary engineering skills, which are grouped into the six categories.
Design Exercise (Part 1) Summary
The Design Exercise (Part 1) Summary offers additional detail about a candidate’s’ performance on the first part of the interview.
At the top you can see Key Takeaways that affect the candidate’s overall recommendation and scores pertaining to following sections of the exercise:
- Conclusion: The recommendation that the candidate makes for the technical decision in question.
- Communication and Sense of Collaboration: The overall communication skills demonstrated by the candidate throughout the Design Exercise, including tone and asking questions of colleagues.
- Domain-Specific Knowledge: Highlights the areas specific to the type of interview that the candidate was assigned (e.g., Software Engineering, Mobile Engineering).
Code Implementation (Part 2) Summary
The Code Implementation (Part 2) Summary offers a similar structure of feedback to the Part 1 summary. Key Takeaways provide insight into the performance on each task candidates are asked to complete.
These takeaways focus on the items that affect the overall scores, such as how much progress the candidate made and the correctness of their solution.
Other Key Features
By default, the Skills Report is anonymized to reduce opportunities for bias and there is minimal information about this candidate’s specific interview process included.