How Mercer | Mettl equipped NLG with the right set of tools to hire quality candidates

The brand’s increasing regional presence across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait, and India has enabled it to expand its team. Subsequently, NLG sought tech hiring solutions that could enable it to filter the best candidate for the desired job role/s. The brand’s goal was to hire the best quality candidates in its IT (Information Technology) department. The organization followed a standard recruitment process: filtering resumes, evaluating the candidates’ skills on their performance in test assignments, followed by face-to-face final rounds of interviews. Unfortunately, even after assessing the candidates’ domain skills through assignments, it could not onboard candidates who could efficiently carry out their job roles.

NLG was facing this challenge with their top-performing interviewees who would under-perform when solving real-world challenges. As a result, the challenges mentioned above were becoming a roadblock for the brand in building a high-performing IT team. Subsequently, the organization realized to foster an enhanced technical recruitment process that could execute successful hiring and deliver quality talent.

NLG actively sought a partner that could streamline and employ a structured approach to its recruitment process in its IT department.

The company understood the need to assess the candidates’ technical skills in a real-world scenario. NLG believed that making better selection decisions from the beginning could ensure reliable and successful hiring- internally and externally.

Therefore, the brand actively sought a recruitment partner that could employ innovation to deal with its challenges, including

Even after setting up a multi-level screening process, NLG could not filter quality candidates who could perform their jobs efficiently, as they did during the interviews. The company had an established process to assess the domain skills of tech candidates; however, there was significant scope for improvement in measuring the technical skills and competencies as per the job role. This gap was further preventing NLG from building a high-performing workforce. Therefore, it wanted to employ a dynamic, secure and scalable battery of coding assessments and simulators to comprehensively assess and evaluate candidates’ knowledge, skills and roles.

NLG also sought to reduce the hiring time by implementing solutions that could execute scalable assessments and save the hiring team’s time. NLG was scouting for solutions that could simultaneously assess multiple candidates without the need for continually invigilating them. The company also wanted an evidence-based analysis with detailed automated reports generated quickly – that could be an excellent predictor of a candidate’s potential and performance.

Mercer |Mettl gained detailed insights into NLG’s hiring strategy by understanding the challenges and charted a detailed approach to eliminate bottlenecks, save time and meet the expectations. The team suggested combining application and knowledge-based assessments for successful hiring. It was a transparent, bias-free and time-saving package that could address the organization’s concerns.

The strategy was deduced considering prior challenges faced by NLG and aimed at improving the candidates’ quality.

Mercer | Mettl offered a three-layered innovative and practical solution, including Database Simulator (DBLysis), Frontend Simulator, and Backend Simulator (Codelysis), to comprehensively test candidates’ real-world coding skills.

The solutions were backed by Mercer | Mettl’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) proctoring to conduct secure virtual coding tests.

A suite of coding simulators to test application-based skills

The following simulators empowered NLG, Oman, to test real-world coding skills and hire candidates with the potential to perform on the job.

1. DBLysis Simulator for Oracle SQL developer skill assessment

DBLysis is a database simulator that helps evaluate a candidate’s database programming skills with SQL challenges.

Key features

• Auto-generation of schema allows an easy grasp of the database structure to better understand the relation and mapping between different tables present.
• Check the quality of the query by grading candidates on multiple data sets.
• Compare the candidate’s query with the one obtained from the answer query. Re-evaluate and re-grade whenever required.
• Evaluate a database programmer thoroughly before making a hiring decision. The simulator supports databases such as MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, or anything in between.
• Easily customizable assessments integrated with plagiarism-checker and remote proctoring to save time and resources.
• Comprehensive auto-generated reports, sharing insights into the assessments and a skill level analysis, including score, percentile, the time-taken, a summary of attempts and other key aspects.

2. Codelysis Simulator for C# Windows communication & C# developer skill assessment

Codelysis is a robust coding simulator to evaluate the hands-on experience and the ability to code in the desired programming language.

Key features

• A pre-build question library with 900+ questions under 25+ topics, available in 20+ languages.
• Easily customizable test creation- with the option to select from Mercer | Mettl’s extensive programming test library or creating one’s test, using own or Mercer | Mettl’s questions.
• A check on plagiarism with Mercer | Mettl’s in-house string comparison algorithm integrated with MOSS (Measure of Software Similarity).
• The Code Playback feature shared the full video of code recorded at each keystroke. The interviewer gained a complete insight into the candidates’ thought processes. Code Playback was closely integrated with code editors such as Emacs, Vims and Sublime.
• Custom Scoring awarded points to each of the hidden and default test cases, successfully passed on several parameters.
• A detailed automated report of the candidate shared the selected language, compilation attempts, error details, code complexities and the actual code.

3. Frontend Simulator for AngularJS 1.x development

The Frontend Simulator evaluated the candidate’s ability to implement web designs and solve problems using frontend technologies.

Key features

• The test shared insights into the candidates’ hands-on skills in Java Basics, AngularJS Basics, Frontend development skills, and Java programming.
• The simulator is infused with a minimalistic interface with frames corresponding to editable HTML, JS and CSS fields.
• Easy creation of test cases to assess candidates exclusively on HTML, CSS & JavaScript concepts.
• It offers better debugging by highlighting JavaScript errors in a console.
• It offers detailed automated reports, evaluating each stage of the test and awarding scores based on the number of attempts, error details and the final code.

Coding assessments to test knowledge-based skills

Mercer | Mettl’s coding assessment platform offered an extensive programming test library, replete with 100,000+ technical questions for 300+ skills, enabling NLG to devise impactful assessments.

• A user-friendly and well-defined test interface helped the recruiting managers set up the applicants’ exams using multiple question types instantaneously.
• The diversity of the questions helped NLG gauge the candidates’ technical concepts in every dimension, along with their future thinking.
• The candidates that met NLG’s essential coding criteria proceeded to the second round.

Fully auto-graded detailed reports

NLG could evaluate candidates in detail, using the custom scoring logic for both assessment and simulation tests.

• Auto-graded simulator instantaneously evaluated the candidates on several parameters, such as code correctness, difficulty level, time and space complexities and other vital parameters.
• The accurate test report offered in-depth analytics of code and programming standards, enabling the hiring managers to predict the candidates’ real-life skills at scale.
• The assessments validation reduced the hiring managers’ human and cumbersome efforts in shortlisting potential candidates.
• A thorough evaluation of the coding potential was free from hiring bias and backed the hiring managers’ decision with optimum reliability and validity of coders’ actual potential.

Proctoring and authentication features to maintain credibility

A remarkable set of online remote proctoring features added to the value and credibility of the assessment in a remote online setting. A stellar candidate authentication system followed by AI-based proctoring and easy access to recording and reviewing the assessment ensured the plausibility of the test.

• Mercer | Mettl’s facial recognition technology and a 3-point candidate authentication system ensured that the right student took the exam.
• Mercer | Mettl’s Secure Exam Browser sanitized the exam environment by disabling additional browsers, tabs, search engines, ports, etc.
• Mercer | Mettl’s AI-powered suite of proctoring tools ensured maximum cheating prevention, using record and review proctoring on Mercer | Mettl’s coding assessment platform.

• Mercer | Mettl fully digitized the technical recruitment process without compromising on candidate experience.
• Coding simulators assessed the candidates’ hands-on coding skills in solving real-world problems.
• An automated grading system aided the organization in expediting the interview process, saving time.
• Detailed reports offered deep insights into the candidate’s strengths, weaknesses and development areas, aiding in a lucid recruitment process.
• The quality of hires improved significantly, and NLG could make key recruitment decisions based on Mercer | Mettl’s assessment. It will continue to employ Mercer| Mettl’s tools for several other roles.