Scala: Everything You Need to Know When Assessing Scala Skills

Scala

This page is about the skill Scala, which is one of more than 40 technical skills you can assess on Alooba. The Scala skill is mainly about how to use Scala for typical tasks in data engineering. For example, things like cleaning data, filtering and grouping data, answering business questions with data, using packages, manipulating data etc. Participants will need to do things like: identify the right Scala code to answer a business problem, identify errors in Scala code, identify output of Scala code, interpret business questions as Scala code, understand what is and is not possible with Scala etc.

Check out the other skills here.

What types of things are included in the Scala skill?

The Scala skill assesses knowledge of topics like how to create Case Classes, Collections, Dynamic Programming, Functions, Maps, Operators, Pattern matching, Streams, Type Hierarchy & Type Variance.

Which types of roles require good Scala skills?

Scala is a commonly assessed skill for roles such as Software Engineer & Backend Engineer.

Why should we test someone’s Scala skills?

A critical part of running an ethical hiring process that’s fair and meritocratic is having objective measures of someone’s skills. Why does ethical hiring matter? Simple - it helps you hire the best person for the job.

Robert Half reported that the cost of a bad hire is on average 15-21% of the employee’s salary.

What was the most common reason for mis-hires? A lack of the right technical skills. This a true hiring own-goal, as it’s so easily preventable through a valid, thorough skills assessment.

So, if your role requires a candidate to know Scala well, you can validate that with Alooba Assess.

Can I test my current team’s Scala skills too?

Yes you sure can. You can assess their skills using Alooba Growth.

Which tests can I find the Scala skill in?

Scala can be assessed through the Concepts & Knowledge test & Free Response test. The Free Response Test includes different answer options like written responses, video answers and diagram answers.

Can I add my own Scala questions?

Yes, you can add your own Scala questions via the question bank.

How do I get access to Alooba to test Scala skills?

Feel free to reach out and book a quick discovery call here.

How difficult is the Scala skill?

Each question on Alooba is categorized by difficulty - Easy, Medium & Hard. You can set the difficulty level to whatever you like by picking and choosing the questions that you want to include.

What else can I assess with Alooba?

You can also assess someone’s intelligence, their personality type and critical soft skills, like communication.

Discover How To Get Started Assessing Scala Skills

Over 50,000 Candidates Can't Be Wrong

The test is designed very well where it tests you different aspect of data comprehension. From data reading, data analysis, Excel formula, inference, and pattern recognition. The free response test is very interesting where it is simple enough to test your communication skill.

Raymond

Marketing strategy senior candidate for global travel company

The test was conducted in all fairness and without any prejudice. It was very well set and the difficulty levels were well measured. I would like to take this opportunity to thank/congratulate the team for the methodology in conducting the test.

Hansel

Analytics candidate for Asian enterprise

Overall I am very happy with the way this test is structured, specially adding the video at the end is an unique experience where it showcases my personality to the recruitment team.

Neeraj

Social media strategy analyst for global hotel company

Overall I found the questions to be fair and appropriate and I believe you have an excellent system for testing and its the best one I have had to use in the last 18 months of my job search. thank you for your time.

Candice

Product analytics candidate at tech scale up

Our Customers Say

I was at WooliesX (Woolworths) and we used Alooba and it was a highly positive experience. We had a large number of candidates. At WooliesX, previously we were quite dependent on the designed test from the team leads. That was quite a manual process. We realised it would take too much time from us. The time saving is great. Even spending 15 minutes per candidate with a manual test would be huge - hours per week, but with Alooba we just see the numbers immediately.

Shen Liu, Logickube (Principal at Logickube)

We get a high flow of applicants, which leads to potentially longer lead times, causing delays in the pipelines which can lead to missing out on good candidates. Alooba supports both speed and quality. The speed to return to candidates gives us a competitive advantage. Alooba provides a higher level of confidence in the people coming through the pipeline with less time spent interviewing unqualified candidates.

Scott Crowe, Canva (Lead Recruiter - Data)

How can you accurately assess somebody's technical skills, like the same way across the board, right? We had devised a Tableau-based assessment. So it wasn't like a past/fail. It was kind of like, hey, what do they send us? Did they understand the data or the values that they're showing accurate? Where we'd say, hey, here's the credentials to access the data set. And it just wasn't really a scalable way to assess technical - just administering it, all of it was manual, but the whole process sucked!

Cole Brickley, Avicado (Director Data Science & Business Intelligence)

I wouldn't dream of hiring somebody in a technical role without doing that technical assessment because the number of times where I've had candidates either on paper on the CV, say, I'm a SQL expert or in an interview, saying, I'm brilliant at Excel, I'm brilliant at this. And you actually put them in front of a computer, say, do this task. And some people really struggle. So you have to have that technical assessment.

Mike Yates, The British Psychological Society (Head of Data & Analytics)

I was at WooliesX (Woolworths) and we used Alooba and it was a highly positive experience. We had a large number of candidates. At WooliesX, previously we were quite dependent on the designed test from the team leads. That was quite a manual process. We realised it would take too much time from us. The time saving is great. Even spending 15 minutes per candidate with a manual test would be huge - hours per week, but with Alooba we just see the numbers immediately.

Shen Liu, Logickube (Principal at Logickube)

We get a high flow of applicants, which leads to potentially longer lead times, causing delays in the pipelines which can lead to missing out on good candidates. Alooba supports both speed and quality. The speed to return to candidates gives us a competitive advantage. Alooba provides a higher level of confidence in the people coming through the pipeline with less time spent interviewing unqualified candidates.

Scott Crowe, Canva (Lead Recruiter - Data)

How can you accurately assess somebody's technical skills, like the same way across the board, right? We had devised a Tableau-based assessment. So it wasn't like a past/fail. It was kind of like, hey, what do they send us? Did they understand the data or the values that they're showing accurate? Where we'd say, hey, here's the credentials to access the data set. And it just wasn't really a scalable way to assess technical - just administering it, all of it was manual, but the whole process sucked!

Cole Brickley, Avicado (Director Data Science & Business Intelligence)

I wouldn't dream of hiring somebody in a technical role without doing that technical assessment because the number of times where I've had candidates either on paper on the CV, say, I'm a SQL expert or in an interview, saying, I'm brilliant at Excel, I'm brilliant at this. And you actually put them in front of a computer, say, do this task. And some people really struggle. So you have to have that technical assessment.

Mike Yates, The British Psychological Society (Head of Data & Analytics)

I was at WooliesX (Woolworths) and we used Alooba and it was a highly positive experience. We had a large number of candidates. At WooliesX, previously we were quite dependent on the designed test from the team leads. That was quite a manual process. We realised it would take too much time from us. The time saving is great. Even spending 15 minutes per candidate with a manual test would be huge - hours per week, but with Alooba we just see the numbers immediately.

Shen Liu, Logickube (Principal at Logickube)