If the hiring process for web and mobile engineers seems mostly cumbersome then welcome to Byteboard. Byteboard was launched about a year ago inside Area 120, Google’s workshop for experimental projects. Byteboard has attracted clients like Lyft, Betterment and Quibi.
Byteboard’s goal is to alleviate the expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone process hiring engineers can be:
“Trying to hire a specialist- someone who has mastery in a technical subdomain- is even harder. If you ask a front-end engineer what they think about technical interviews, usually their experience is even worse than the average engineer, since traditional technical interviews over-emphasize skills that are often even less relevant for front-end work.”
The three main objectives of Byteboard are project-based interview evaluated using highly structured rubrics, fully anonymized evaluation of candidate materials to limit bias and asynchronous, real-world interview format that limits candidate anxiety & the need for excessive preparation.
An example of Byteboard’s methodologies are for example, instead of requiring memorization of theoretical concepts and ideas, the candidate demonstrates their skills in an authentic engineering environment that is reflective of their day-to-day work. For this reason, “front-end engineers prefer taking the Byteboard interview for the same reason generalists do: It more accurately represents the work they might actually do on the job.”
A comprehensive picture of a candidate’s software engineering and development skills, and role-related knowledge is emphasized. Byteboard mission is therefore to focus on “to make technical interviews more effective, efficient, and equitable for all.”
