Validating individual skills

To make sure applicants have the skill-sets required, we have a number of formats we use to assess someone’s skills – outside of our general interviews. Depending on the seniority level of the role we recruit for as well as the type of role, different formats will be used, but these are the standard tool in our process:

CV and Portfolio review

For design or development applicants, we hope you have either a PDF portfolio, or better, a web based portfolio that showcases past work and experiences in a dense, digestible format. This helps us get an overview and grasp what skills and interests someone has. We also assume you have a straightforward description of experiences and education in a CV format. Read more about how to catch our attention at https://careers.blockzero.se/pages/how-to-land-a-job

Home challenge

In some cases, we will ask you to do a home challenge. We do this primarily when a portfolio does not cover all ends the role requires, or the relevant work experience cannot be validated in any other way. We recognise that the format of home challenges comes with some inherited problems, such as the time and investment it takes for the applicant. We understand this, and never ask for more than 10 hours of time spent on a challenge, and there won’t be a deadline for submitting.

Our challenges are never based on real problems or needs, they will never be real business problems, or real client briefs but are hypothetical and generated to be as generic as possible. You as an applicant always hold the intellectual right to the content you are producing in the challenge, and we never use the contents from a challenge in any real world scenario related to our business.

Whiteboard session

In some cases a discussion in front of a whiteboard could be a good way of testing applicants, due to its equal nature of time investment. The applicant and Block Zero representatives, spending the same amount of time together in a room (physically, or digitally), solving a hypothetical problem together.

This format is great for understanding how applicants collaborate, think, plan, and execute on the spot in a group setting. We understand that this format might not suit everyone and every role and will adapt to other formats as appropriate.

Mindful of your time

Regardless of what evaluation format we use, we do everything we can to only ask for challenges from recruits that we believe in and want to hire. We are conscious of your time and wellbeing, and won’t ask you to do a challenge if we do not believe you would be a good fit for our team.

Biases

While we know that unconscious bias is something we can never get rid of completely, we actively work to minimize its impact.

• We make sure to have multiple people looking at applicants to counter any individual’s unconscious bias.
• We screen your application and CV with tools and procedures to minimise focus on personal characteristics. This could for example mean blocking names, picture and other personal information at our initial review, we are trying different methodologies to learn and improve but also realising we each have blind spots is sometimes better than believing a tool can solve this for us. And of course, before moving on with the process, either to a next interview or not, we will have reviewed your portfolio and there in seen names and portraits et.c.