CodeSignal Develop makes it easy to track your skill gaps and learning progress.
CodeSignal, the industry leader in tech talent assessment, has launched CodeSignal Develop, its AI-powered, practice-based tech skills learning platform, to the general public. CodeSignal Develop comes at a time when tech skills are in higher demand than ever before and top universities are struggling to develop them.
From skills assessment to skills development
For the past eight years, CodeSignal has been assessing skills, understanding how different skills interrelate, and identifying the specific skills that leading companies are looking for in future employees. Through analyzing jobs, isolating skills, building assessments, and validating results, the company has grown to become a leading tool for assessing talent. CodeSignal Learn, introduced in February 2024, leverages AI technology and a library of assessment data to create an environment where students can learn by practicing skills guided by feedback from a trusted AI companion, helping students master foundational skills before moving on to more complex applications.
CodeSignal Develop builds on this framework by adding capabilities like user provisioning, admin controls, and dashboards to provide leaders with actionable skills data and analytical reports. The platform enables organizations to foster a culture of continuous learning and skills development, and empowers teams to keep up with technology changes.
Closing the skills gap
Identifying and addressing skills gaps is essential, especially in an era when knowledge is growing rapidly and tools are expanding at a rapid pace. According to CodeSignal analysis, 40% of organizations face a skills gap, and another 40% are expected to find themselves in that situation over the next five years. Faced with this challenge, “developers are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to learn new skills, with 76% of developers using AI-powered coding tools.”
At the organizational level, skills gaps arise as new skills emerge and old ones decay while still necessary. Prompt engineering skills epitomize the former. Virtually unknown a year ago, this skill is now in high demand and will soon go from desirable to essential. As the pace of change quickens, new skills will continue to emerge, creating new gaps and threatening to turn existing gaps into chasms. At the other end of the spectrum is Cobol programming, a skill that is essential for banking work, yet few are actively trying to learn. Through its skills framework, CodeSignal can identify needed skills and generate course content and training materials that enable employees to acquire these skills.
Challenges in building a learning culture
One of the challenges facing companies that want to systematically identify and assess skills gaps is doing so without stressing employees. CodeSignal learned this when developing its first assessment. If you suddenly showed up one day and started administering assessments to everyone in the office, it would probably cause panic. Even if you appeal to your end goal, there's still an inevitable feeling of being in the spotlight.
A better approach is to assess current understanding in the context of teaching something new. This way, existing gaps can be identified and addressed while new learning is taking place. However, this approach only works in a practice-focused platform, and this is where CodeSignal Develop excels. Students need to be able to practice their skills and receive meaningful feedback, such as that provided by CodeSignal's AI dog companion, Cosmo. If the learning culture consists only of lectures followed by heavy-handed assessments, the result will be a slide between boredom and fear, not a learning culture.
Discover and develop your potential
Beyond assessing immediate capabilities, CodeSignal Develop also allows companies to identify potential talent. This could be potential talent among current staff identified during learning exercises, or potential talent among job seekers. Tigran Sloyan, CEO and co-founder of CodeSignal, says this could potentially be a great way to surface talent, especially for companies that reject 99% of applicants. While subjecting applicants to a technical assessment and then rejecting them only invites hostility, letting applicants know where they fall short and providing directions for improvement can provide a path to improvement.
Some companies take this a step further and offer applicants access to CodeSignal Develop if they are willing to share their progress data with the company. This allows the company to say, “Maybe you're not ready yet, but learn, improve, and apply again. We'll wait and watch.” Such an approach gives insight into not only what people are learning, but also their learning trajectory. Seeing what someone is learning and how fast they can learn is a strong signal about a candidate's long-term potential. After all, what a person currently knows is often less important than what they could know if they focused.
This is especially important now, when having or not having a degree is no longer considered a substitute for having skills or being able to quickly learn them. As the industry pace quickens and new gaps continue to emerge, companies need a deeper understanding of their employees' capabilities and potential. CodeSignal Develop helps companies understand the gaps and the speed at which they can realize their potential.
Organizations interested in CodeSignal Develop can explore plans and solutions here.
