We recently had a design position we were ready to fill. We had two totally qualified job candidates and it seemed from our collective hours of interviews that either would have been a big score for the team. When it came down to the final decision, the four of us on the interviewing team found ourselves at an impasse. Both were friendly and a good cultural fit. Both had strong resumes and portfolios. We were really stuck.

Then I remembered back to my days at Travelocity-Sydney. Whenever we hired an engineer we gave them a take home exam that required writing some code with a few hairy recursive functions. The test took most about an hour or two to complete and it was always really easy to see who was the best candidate. A few follow-up questions were made to make sure they wrote the code themselves. It always worked.

Back to the two design candidates… The hiring team liked the idea of giving a simple test. (Well, we tried to call it an “exercise”, but both candidates figured it was a “test”.) The ‘exercise’ had to be short and not something we would use on the site immediately (so that we were not looking like we were getting work done for free). It had to be pretty open as to judge creativity, but also something similar to the work they would be doing if hired. Finally, it had to have a deadline.

The results were dramatic and clear. One candidate got her files back to us within a day (we had asked to have them in three days). The other candidate had to be asked after the deadline if he still wanted to submit - he definitely did. The first candidate was very creative, organized, obviously loved animals and had an excellent design sense. The other candidate, while not awful, was–when it came to execution–clearly nowhere near as competent as the first. The decision was made unanimously and with real excitement for the new team member. After six months, we could not be happier that Yuko is on team Dogster/Catster. She has exceeded all of our expectations and in retrospect it’s frightening to think that we might have offered the position to the other candidate and lost her.

So, if you are ever having trouble deciding between two candidates or even if you just want to validate your opinion of a certain team member to-be, try a test.