(00:00:05) - Welcome to The HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up and coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new, innovative solutions available in the market. And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot. Stay tuned for details at the end of the show.
(00:00:46) - Hello and welcome to another episode of the HR Tech Spotlight. Today we are shining a spotlight on CoderPad, a technical interview platform that enables a quick, accurate read on a software developer candidate skills. The platform helps candidates easily share their skills so your team can understand how they work through both collaborative coding sessions and take home assignments. Joining me to discuss CoderPad is Amanda Richardson, CEO of the company. Welcome to the show, Amanda.
(00:01:14) - Thank you. Good to be here.
(00:01:17) - So the first question I ask everybody, tell us about your background in the HR tech space.
(00:01:22) - You bet. Well, I started in product management maybe 15, 20 years ago now, which is crazy to think about. And I spent five years at an HR tech company working on actually a very similar problem around sourcing and applicant tracking for hourly workers and now tackling the problem at the opposite end of the spectrum, maybe for employees. We're really working with developers to help them, both hiring managers and recruiters, as well as the candidates understand where their skills lie, how that compares to a role currently in discussions. So the somehow hiring people is never solved. It's given me lots of opportunities of things to work on.
(00:02:00) - Ah, that is so true. So true. So let's talk a little bit more about what code or pad does.
(00:02:06) - Yeah. So we are really a platform for assessing a developer's skills. And so we work exclusively on the challenges of development. Developers are often thought of as the people who create software.
(00:02:17) - But sometimes those technical skills can be in data teams or marketing teams or finance teams. But we really want to help bridge the gap for, you know, a hiring manager or recruiter who hears, we need someone with five years of JavaScript experience and a person who's like, what does that mean? Like, what level of skill do you need? What are the what are the criteria of those skills? And my personal goal, and what we're really on a mission to do is ensure that people are hired for their skills, not for their resumes. I think we have a challenge and kind of a a norm in so many places where we hire people who have a degree in this or went to this school. So clearly they're a good software developer. But the reality is more than half of software developers are self-taught. And so creating a way for developers to showcase their skills and actually find the right fit roles is what we work hard to do.
(00:03:11) - And what's the story behind how coder Pat was founded?
(00:03:14) - Yeah, well, it's actually that problem.
(00:03:17) - So we have two different products who have two different founding stories. One of them was a manager or a, you know, an architect who is responsible for really understanding in the candidates who actually understood how to code well and who was particularly skilled in development. And he found that, like, he would hire people and they would be a disaster, or he would not hire someone and be like, that person doesn't know what they're talking about. And then they would go off to do amazing things at another company. And he was like, there's got to be a better way than either talking to people or screen sharing or whiteboarding. Like, if I could just spend an hour working with this person and we could pair program together, I would really know that person's skills. So that was the origin of our live product. And then the origin of our asynchronous screening product was a self-taught developer who found he couldn't get a job because he would send his resume in and the HR team would say, nope, doesn't fit, doesn't have a degree in computer science.
(00:04:11) - And he was like, this is BS. I've been programming, frankly, since I was a kid. I know these skills went back, got his degree, came out, got the same job he was, would have been, was applying for years before and was working with a bunch of people who didn't have skills. He was like, this is terrible. Like HR teams are recruiting, teams are just hiring based on who has degrees as opposed to actually has the skills. So in one view it's the candidate problem and in one view it's the manager problem. But it's all about trying to bridge this gap between what it says on a resume, what is actually required to do a job, and like how you can actually prove out your skills and, you know, make sure the most talented, right fit people get the jobs.
(00:04:51) - That makes total sense. I mean, developer roles are hard to fill, right? There's there's not enough qualified candidates out there for sure.
(00:04:59) - Well, and this is the thing, right? More and more developers are being demanded.
(00:05:02) - Right. Software engineering jobs are going to grow depending on how you slice the numbers and who you're asking. Somewhere between 5 and 30% a year for the next X years. Like it's not getting easier and we're not producing graduates. And frankly, we don't need to produce graduates. It's it's it's a role where so many people are learning the skills of coding and programming. I mean, I took my first programming class when I was six. It wasn't fancy. Well, you know, you're just moving the little logo around, the little turtle logo and apple around the screen. Like, this is something that's kind of a learned skill. It doesn't need the university courses for it. It certainly helps, but it doesn't mean you can't be successful. So finding a way to bridge that gap between the demand and the market, the people who have the skills and making sure the right people are getting hired for the right roles.
(00:05:49) - I think it also helps with those individuals that maybe aren't as good at interviewing but have mad skills, right? Because we all know, like as a hiring manager, you go in and you're looking for someone who's really articulate and presents themselves well.
(00:06:04) - And I don't know, developers aren't always that personality. You know, where the last thing they want to do in the world is have an interview and they don't shine the way you might be looking at it, but they may be one heck of a developer and you don't want to miss out on that opportunity. That's absolutely.
(00:06:22) - Right. And a lot of the norms, even around developer hiring, don't actually test you for your development skills. They test you for how you handle stress. There's research actually being done by professors. There's a whole group, um, a PhD at NC state that is analyzing this, where they have shown that your performance in an interview has little to do with whether or not you are understand the problem, or can even solve the problem, but has so much to do with someone staring at you and grilling you with these hard questions and rapid fire session, which is actually how none of us work, right? Like we all just need a little time and space to like, go figure out a problem and produce a work product.
(00:06:59) - And so, so much of the process is broken. And, you know, giving a people a place to really show their skills and solve what is asked of them day to day, and is much more like the real world job than it is sometimes what the interviewing is today. So lots of opportunities to improve. There's not enough hours in the day right now for my job.
(00:07:20) - I imagine. So tell me, you know, when you think about the competition that's out in the market that goes up against what makes your solution unique or different from those other options?
(00:07:32) - Yeah, so much of what we focus on is the candidate and the developer experience. I think there are many ways to approach this problem, but I think unless you're holding the candidate and the developer both as a hiring manager and the candidate experience at the top, it just has to work. It has to be performant. It has to be fast. It has to be look like their day to day work environment as opposed to, I think, some other products who maybe have tried to approach it in a less sophisticated, technical way.
(00:08:03) - And so what I'm excited about is really how much our developers love our product and how they stand behind it. They take it from company to company to company to company, because they know it is the one that is both clear for the candidates to be able to show their skills, but also clear as a hiring manager that they know how to just jump in and get started. And so we see that whether it's completion rates and tests or even ease of use and customer feedback and candidate feedback, it's by far the best in the market.
(00:08:31) - What type of companies would you say are the perfect for fit for coder solution? Yeah, I.
(00:08:36) - Mean, I think CoderPad fits best with companies who are hiring software developers, which, you know, you can think of, you know, maybe the apples and the Facebooks and the, you know, the kind of the, the big tech companies. But there's also there's software developers that a lot of different companies, their software developers at John Deere, their software developers have for their software developers at, you know, Home Depot, these are all companies that have large development teams.
(00:09:00) - And so we work best with the, the, the, the software teams, the hiring managers, the leaders of technology who want to have great talent and make sure they're hiring and retaining the best talent. And then the other place where we actually have a lot of I guess, presence, if you will, is financial services. So you'd be surprised how much of Wall Street and a lot of the financial services firms are actually software jobs, as opposed to maybe more traditional finance jobs. And then third is IT services. There are still a lot of contingent workers, various roles for which it may not be a permanent position. So regarding, you know, various IT services firms and consulting firms are always looking to find the best developer talent and be able to meet their customer's needs.
(00:09:44) - When you think about that ideal customer, is there a volume of roles that you should be trying to fill to fit this, or is it designed to work with any level?
(00:09:55) - Yeah, this is where I'm actually most proud of our approach to the market.
(00:09:59) - So we have a product that you can go on our website and buy. Like you don't need to talk to a salesperson. We will work with you as small as you are. We have starter plans where even if you're only hiring for one role right now, you can jump in and make that process much more effective. And then we scale up to companies who are running tens of thousands of interviews a month, if you can believe that, I have no idea how they do the scheduling of tens of thousands of developer interviews a month, but we definitely have companies at both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between. I think we're most known for being able to jump in and work with a team, or maybe a small startup, and then we scale with them as they evolve and grow, and it's been really fun to see their success and how we can partner with them on that.
(00:10:41) - Speaking of success, can you give us some examples or stories about the impact that organizations have seen when they're working with your company?
(00:10:50) - Absolutely.
(00:10:51) - So I think as I, as I, as I study the customers and those who are really using us to the to the fullest, we have customers who use this in their university recruiting program. Right. And so you're going around to all these different schools, you're trying to find the best candidates, but you need a high volume solution. And so the customers who really thrive with us are using us to accelerate their university recruiting program, ensuring that one, they understand the skills of every every applicant that comes through the process and to faster time to hire. So by automating a lot of that and really being able to see the results, they get a much better throughput in terms of their university recruiting program. The other one, I would say, is companies who are really scaling and trying to hire for diverse roles. So we support over 60 languages and frameworks. And I think about a customer like stripe, who's using us in multiple different technologies and multiple different areas and wants to really understand how they can get the best talent, not just for one technology and one team, but across the organization, from junior roles to senior roles.
(00:11:53) - And have we are bespoke enough, if you will, that they can create independent interviewing processes for each role, as well as independent languages and frameworks that they would need for those roles to understand the skills. And so those are really our biggest successes as we can help to standardize how they're defining skills and really making sure they're using it holistically throughout the organization for all the technical roles.
(00:12:17) - So before we hit record, we were chatting about all the cool things that are in the hopper for iPad. Tell me, what is the future vision for the company?
(00:12:25) - Yes. Well, I mean, there's so much work to be done on recruiting for sure. But one of the things where we've seen really an embrace in the market and a use case within our customer base is around not just understanding the skills and hiring, but understanding the skills of your talent pool or your your your employee base throughout the life cycle. And so we see customers using the product now for understanding reskilling. Understanding training is my training program working.
(00:12:52) - We're spending all this money on learning and development. Are we actually improving our skill level on these pieces, and then starting to talk about how these skills actually play into promotions and career pathing and performance management, making sure that the people that are getting promoted and getting rewarded are the ones who also have shown great skill, growth, and making sure it's a little more skills based in how you're defining your roles and your processes. I think we all aspire to live in a world where it is about skills and your proficiency, and how that actually plays into your employee life cycle. And I think the beautiful thing about development is it probably is the most advanced and quantifiable in that way. And so I'm excited to really become a skills engine across the organization, not just solving the, you know, hiring problem, but making sure we continue that throughout the lifecycle.
(00:13:41) - So let's say we've got some prospects out there who are currently evaluating their options to evaluate the, you know, individuals out there for these types of roles.
(00:13:51) - What would you say is the biggest hesitation that you see companies have in implementing a technology like code or pad?
(00:14:00) - Yeah. You know, I think the the do nothing solution is always what is the challenge. And it's particularly challenging because it's what built the team that got that is in the process of evaluating the solution. Right. And so I think why change? People always wonder like it's not broken. We have good enough development teams, but what we find is with leaders who really want to make sure they're adopting new technologies, that they have a team that's organized and built around growing their skills, as well as continuing to learn and evolve, making sure you're evaluating those tools and those skills at the beginning of the process, as opposed to doing a bunch of hiring and then being like, why are we stuck? Why aren't we growing? Why aren't why aren't we delivering on things? If you take a step back, like, why do we have all these development teams? Because we have to deliver software or products or solutions, either the internal customers or external customers to help us meet our company goals.
(00:14:58) - And unless you have the right talent and are really focused on the process to get and retain that talent, you miss the opportunity. And so I think it's easy to say it's not broken. We do hiring. You know, sometimes people don't work out, but if you actually study your time to hire, your cost per hire and your retention rates, you'll find that making sure you have the right skills based process will make you much more successful. Lowering your cost per hire, increasing your time to fill, and then making sure your turnover goes down so you retain the people that you spend a lot of money attracting to your company.
(00:15:31) - Yeah. There's nothing worse than hiring someone you think is the right fit and finding out they're not. And you have to start the process all over.
(00:15:38) - I mean, for the customers who are like, why? There's nothing broken. What are we doing? I'm like, how many people have you fired within six months? And they're like, oh, well, I mean that ultimately the problem we can solve, right? Like we can blame it on a rogue manager and a rogue candidate here.
(00:15:53) - But if it is a pattern, it's because you're not doing the right thing in your selection process.
(00:15:57) - Yeah, that makes sense. And I think sometimes it's hard to see from the inside because you're go, go, go right. And trying to move 500mph for sure.
(00:16:06) - Exactly. Yeah. No. And I have empathy for the development leaders who are like, I can't use another tool and no more change. Like I understand. But if you can take the step back and actually look at the cost of the people problem, and it's hopefully eventually creates an opportunity for the managers to really deliver on their goals and their roadmap and the features they've promised to the organization. It all kind of sorts itself out. If you can make sure you have the right talent to actually deliver on the the promises you're making to the business, to drive it forward.
(00:16:32) - Yeah. Amen. So what things should someone purchasing this type of technology take into consideration as they evaluate their options?
(00:16:41) - Yeah, I think what's hard and maybe misunderstood about this space is it's often seen as a HR tech tool.
(00:16:46) - Right. So this falls under the purview of the CRO or chief people officer. And I think what is maybe misunderstood is actually the user experience is so dependent on the engineering team, both the candidates as well as the managers and the architects who are doing the evaluations. And so I think what I would challenge a, you know, a people leader or talent leader, recruiting leader who's looking at these solutions is one, make sure your development teams really understand and are going to use the product. There's nothing worse than buying something that doesn't meet their needs. And then the second one to consider is how does this work within your whole HR tech stack? Right? Like you'll need an applicant tracking system. You'll have all these other parts of the organization that need to consume this data. And so making sure you've got a good experience with the integrations and the parts that you need across the organization. And then three, I think one of the things we really emphasize is like, don't be so user based. And so I know a lot of companies like to sell user seat licenses.
(00:17:47) - What we find is that burns out engineers. If you only have a few people who are in the tool always doing the interviews, they get exhausted. So we take an approach that's like, this is an organizational problem. Let's make this usage based, not user based. And so everybody in the organization has access to the tool. And to be able to use it without penalizing the company or actually the talent team budget, so that it can be broadly adopted and you can actually create a uniform process in the organization.
(00:18:14) - Amanda, what final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?
(00:18:17) - My final thoughts are as you're thinking about your hiring plans, like make sure you're understanding your processes and the outcomes that come. I know we're all about to go through, you know, getting handed down like we need 100 new hires next year, 100 new developers. I think everybody should just take a moment to step back and say, like, do we have the right process to do this, or do we have the right ways to understand who we should hire? And are we measuring that all the way through to, you know, time on job and the retention rates and making sure you're looking at your metrics globally and how what processes are driving those metrics? I think it's an exciting time.
(00:18:51) - I think more and more developers are being created and more and more developers are needed, and so getting the process right sooner than later will absolutely allow us all to hit our goals much more effectively, which is going to be the challenge in the next coming years, is people are like, we need to do more with less. This is what we're here to help you solve.
(00:19:10) - So where can our listeners go to learn more about code or Pad?
(00:19:13) - Absolutely. We would love to tell you more. Our website is Coder Patio. You can Google CoderPad. There are lots of ways to find out about us. We run webinars. We'll probably be at an HR tech event where you are. And of course I'm always available. You can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Amanda Richardson, and I'm happy to talk to you about hiring developers anytime.
(00:19:32) - Excellent. Amanda, thanks so much for being a guest on the HR Tech Spotlight. It was great to chat with you today.
(00:19:39) - It was very fun.
(00:19:40) - Thank you for having me. It was good to get a chance to talk about the problems and the opportunities in the space, and I'd love to talk more.
(00:19:47) - Yeah. For those listeners who hire software developers, be sure to check out Code or Pad. To learn more, we'll drop the links in the show notes below.
(00:20:00) - Thanks for listening to this episode of The HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up and coming HR technology options in the market. If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be considered for a guest spot on this program, please contact me via GrowthMode Marketing. Com or reach out to me Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn and if you found this show informative, subscribe. Connect with us on social media and leave a review. This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.