For the first time Devskiller is sharing the insights gathered as a result of testing 112,654 developers from over 120 countries for companies in over 40 countries over the course of 2018.

The results are presented in Devskiller Global Technical Hiring & Skills Report 2019 which is a downloadable PDF. Here we choose just a few of it findings.

First, however, what distinguishes Devskiller from other technical hiring companies? Since its launch in 2013 it has aimed to test "real developer skills" for its customers and had trademarked "RealLifeTesting". According to its website:

Why ask developers to show general, algorithmic knowledge instead of the skills they actually need for the job? We developed the RealLifeTesting^TM methodology to find actual problem solvers. Skilled developers complete our tests with the satisfaction of having solved a practical business challenge, not frustrated by trivial brain teasers.

To date Devskiller has tested 310,000 candidates, over a third of them in 2018 which is the period covered by this report, and covers 57 technologies. Java is the most popular language developers are tested in (37%), followed closely by SQL (34%).

In this table, which relates only to the top 5 languages, the percentages add up to over 100% as many candidates are tested in multiple languages that companies are looking for. What is perhaps more interesting is that by far the most popular testing combination is Java+SQL which accounts for over a quarter of tests: 

SQL is paired with three other languages - JavaScript (16%), .NET (8%) and PHP (8%), bringing its share of tests to 58%.

Five of the combinations include JavaScript, paired most strongly with CSS and HTML(19%)  to provide a front-end skill set. JavaScript plus SQL (16%) is almost as popular. Altogether JavaScript crops up in 57% of test combos and in fact it is expertise in JavaScript that most companies (70%) are looking for. 

The survey comes up with some interesting time and place findings. Whereas it is takes on average 69.23 hours (2.88 days) for candidates to complete a test, those sent on Tuesdays are completed fastest (2.57 days) and those on Wednesdays slowest (3.23 days).

While 73% of candidates finish the tests sent to them, and 92% of those who start a test finish them, some countries have a much higher rate, in particular Latvia (98%)  and Armenia (97%)

The average score on coding tests is 40.71 and again there are some outstanding countries, with the top three being New Zealand (54.66%), Netherlands (53.58%) and Russia (50.15%).

More Information

Devskiller Global Technical Hiring & Skills Report 2019

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