Why you should use Shell Test?

The Shell Test makes use of scenario-based questions to test for on-the-job skills as opposed to theoretical knowledge, ensuring that candidates who do well on this screening test have the relavant skills. The questions are designed to covered following on-the-job aspects: Shell commands execution and navigation Shell scripting and automation File handling and manipulation in Shell Memory management and optimization Concurrent execution and process management Troubleshooting shell-related issues Operating system concepts and Linux architecture Advanced shell scripting techniques Network and system monitoring using shell Security and access control in shell scripting

Shell Test

Q: What topics are covered in the Shell Test?

Shell commands Shell Scripting File Handling Memory Management Concurrent execution Troubleshooting

About the test:

The Shell online test uses scenario-based multiple-choice questions to evaluate a candidate's knowledge and skills related to shell scripting fundamentals, file and directory management, text processing and manipulation, command-line tools and utilities, process management and control, networking and system administration, and shell scripting best practices and design patterns. The test aims to assess the candidate's proficiency in Unix shell scripting and their ability to perform system administration tasks using shell scripts.

Covered skills:

Shell commands
File Handling
Concurrent execution

Shell Scripting
Memory Management
Troubleshooting

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9 reasons why

Adaface Shell Assessment Test is the most accurate way to shortlist Linux Deveopers

Reason #1

Tests for on-the-job skills

The Shell Test helps recruiters and hiring managers identify qualified candidates from a pool of resumes, and helps in taking objective hiring decisions. It reduces the administrative overhead of interviewing too many candidates and saves time by filtering out unqualified candidates at the first step of the hiring process.

The test screens for the following skills that hiring managers look for in candidates:

Able to write shell commands and scripts to automate tasks
Proficient in handling files and directories in the shell environment
Knowledgeable in memory management and optimization in shell scripting
Skilled in concurrent execution and multitasking in the shell
Capable of troubleshooting and resolving issues in the shell
Familiar with common shell commands and their usage
Able to manipulate and extract data from files in the shell
Experienced in using shell scripting for automation and repetitive tasks
Knowledgeable in process management and job control in the shell
Proficient in shell scripting techniques and best practices

Reason #2

No trick questions

Traditional assessment tools use trick questions and puzzles for the screening, which creates a lot of frustration among candidates about having to go through irrelevant screening assessments.

View sample questions

The main reason we started Adaface is that traditional pre-employment assessment platforms are not a fair way for companies to evaluate candidates. At Adaface, our mission is to help companies find great candidates by assessing on-the-job skills required for a role.

Why we started Adaface

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Reason #3

Non-googleable questions

We have a very high focus on the quality of questions that test for on-the-job skills. Every question is non-googleable and we have a very high bar for the level of subject matter experts we onboard to create these questions. We have crawlers to check if any of the questions are leaked online. If/ when a question gets leaked, we get an alert. We change the question for you & let you know.

How we design questions

These are just a small sample from our library of 10,000+ questions. The actual questions on this Shell Test will be non-googleable.

🧐 Question
Easy Commands	Try practice test
Which of the following unix commands change the case of first three lines of file “classified” from lowercase to uppercase
Easy Expressions	Try practice test
What does this shell script output?
Easy Loops	Try practice test
What are fourth and sixth lines output by this script:

	🧐 Question	🔧 Skill
	Easy Commands	2 mins Shell Scripting	Try practice test
Which of the following unix commands change the case of first three lines of file “classified” from lowercase to uppercase
	Easy Expressions	2 mins Shell Scripting	Try practice test
What does this shell script output?
	Easy Loops	2 mins Shell Scripting	Try practice test
What are fourth and sixth lines output by this script:

	🧐 Question	🔧 Skill	💪 Difficulty	⌛ Time
	Commands	Shell Scripting	Easy	2 mins	Try practice test
Which of the following unix commands change the case of first three lines of file “classified” from lowercase to uppercase
	Expressions	Shell Scripting	Easy	2 mins	Try practice test
What does this shell script output?
	Loops	Shell Scripting	Easy	2 mins	Try practice test
What are fourth and sixth lines output by this script:

Reason #4

1200+ customers in 75 countries

With Adaface, we were able to optimise our initial screening process by upwards of 75%, freeing up precious time for both hiring managers and our talent acquisition team alike!

Brandon Lee, Head of People, Love, Bonito

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Reason #5

Designed for elimination, not selection

The most important thing while implementing the pre-employment Shell Test in your hiring process is that it is an elimination tool, not a selection tool. In other words: you want to use the test to eliminate the candidates who do poorly on the test, not to select the candidates who come out at the top. While they are super valuable, pre-employment tests do not paint the entire picture of a candidate’s abilities, knowledge, and motivations. Multiple easy questions are more predictive of a candidate's ability than fewer hard questions. Harder questions are often "trick" based questions, which do not provide any meaningful signal about the candidate's skillset.

Science behind Adaface tests

Reason #6

1 click candidate invites

Email invites: You can send candidates an email invite to the Shell Test from your dashboard by entering their email address.

Public link: You can create a public link for each test that you can share with candidates.

API or integrations: You can invite candidates directly from your ATS by using our pre-built integrations with popular ATS systems or building a custom integration with your in-house ATS.

Reason #7

Detailed scorecards & benchmarks

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Reason #8

High completion rate

Adaface tests are conversational, low-stress, and take just 25-40 mins to complete.

This is why Adaface has the highest test-completion rate (86%), which is more than 2x better than traditional assessments.

Reason #9

Advanced Proctoring

Learn more

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About the Shell Online Test

Why you should use Pre-employment Shell Test?

The Shell Test makes use of scenario-based questions to test for on-the-job skills as opposed to theoretical knowledge, ensuring that candidates who do well on this screening test have the relavant skills. The questions are designed to covered following on-the-job aspects:

Shell commands execution and navigation
Shell scripting and automation
File handling and manipulation in Shell
Memory management and optimization
Concurrent execution and process management
Troubleshooting shell-related issues
Operating system concepts and Linux architecture
Advanced shell scripting techniques
Network and system monitoring using shell
Security and access control in shell scripting

Once the test is sent to a candidate, the candidate receives a link in email to take the test. For each candidate, you will receive a detailed report with skills breakdown and benchmarks to shortlist the top candidates from your pool.

What topics are covered in the Shell Test?

Shell commands
Shell commands refer to the commands that are executed in a shell or terminal to interact with an operating system. This skill is essential in assessing a candidate's knowledge and proficiency in working with command-line interfaces and executing various operations such as file manipulation, process management, and system configuration.
Shell Scripting
Shell scripting involves writing sequences of commands in a scripting language to automate tasks and perform complex operations. Assessing this skill is crucial as it demonstrates a candidate's ability to create efficient and reusable scripts that enhance productivity and streamline system administration.
File Handling
File handling encompasses the operations performed on files, such as creating, reading, writing, modifying, and deleting files. Evaluating this skill allows recruiters to gauge a candidate's understanding of file systems, their ability to manipulate files, and their knowledge of file permissions, file formats, and file system organization.
Memory Management
Memory management refers to the management of computer memory resources to optimize the utilization of memory for efficient execution of programs. Assessing this skill helps recruiters assess a candidate's understanding of memory allocation, deallocation, memory leaks, and the ability to optimize memory usage in shell scripts.
Concurrent execution
Concurrent execution pertains to the ability to overlap multiple tasks to improve overall system performance. Evaluating this skill is significant as it demonstrates a candidate's familiarity with concurrent programming, process synchronization, scheduling, and efficient utilization of system resources.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting involves identifying and resolving issues or problems that may arise during the execution of shell scripts or system operations. This skill is vital to assess as it indicates a candidate's ability to analyze and debug errors, perform system diagnosis, and apply effective troubleshooting techniques to ensure smooth execution and optimal performance.
Full list of covered topics
The actual topics of the questions in the final test will depend on your job description and requirements. However, here's a list of topics you can expect the questions for Shell Test to be based on.
Shell variables
Conditional statements
Loops
Arrays
Functions
I/O redirection
Regular expressions
Command substitution
String manipulation
Error handling
Process management
Job control
File permissions
File manipulation
Directory navigation
Shell options
Pattern matching
Command line arguments
Input validation
Script debugging
Shell environment variables
Signals and traps
Process substitution
Background execution
Command history
Scripting best practices
System monitoring
Remote execution
Error codes
Filesystem manipulation
Text processing
Command-line utilities
Resource monitoring
Network utilities
User management
Environment customization
TIMTOWTDI (There's More Than One Way To Do It)
Handling signals
File compression
Stream editing
Job scheduling
String comparison
Filesystem hierarchy
IO redirection operators
Shell configuration files
Background processes
Command substitution
File permissions
Directory permissions
Memory usage
Filesystem monitoring
FIFOs (named pipes)
Shell scripting security
Shell script debugging
Process synchronization
Concurrent execution
Troubleshooting techniques

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What roles can I use the Shell Test for?

Linux Deveoper
Bash Developer
Shell Scripting Developer
DevOps Engineer

How is the Shell Test customized for senior candidates?

For intermediate/ experienced candidates, we customize the assessment questions to include advanced topics and increase the difficulty level of the questions. This might include adding questions on topics like

Advanced Linux commands and utilities
Performance optimization and resource utilization
Diagnostic and debugging techniques in shell
Shell scripting best practices and standards
Working with system logs and log analysis
Handling file permissions and ownership
Efficient data processing and manipulation in shell
Automating system backups and recovery
Knowledge of shell programming languages
Experience with shell-based deployment and version control

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The hiring managers felt that through the technical questions that they asked during the panel interviews, they were able to tell which candidates had better scores, and differentiated with those who did not score as well. They are highly satisfied with the quality of candidates shortlisted with the Adaface screening.

85%

reduction in screening time

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Shell Hiring Test FAQs

Can I combine multiple skills into one custom assessment?

Yes, absolutely. Custom assessments are set up based on your job description, and will include questions on all must-have skills you specify. Here's a quick guide on how you can request a custom test.

Do you have any anti-cheating or proctoring features in place?

We have the following anti-cheating features in place:

Non-googleable questions
IP proctoring
Screen proctoring
Web proctoring
Webcam proctoring
Plagiarism detection
Secure browser
Copy paste protection

Read more about the proctoring features.

How do I interpret test scores?

The primary thing to keep in mind is that an assessment is an elimination tool, not a selection tool. A skills assessment is optimized to help you eliminate candidates who are not technically qualified for the role, it is not optimized to help you find the best candidate for the role. So the ideal way to use an assessment is to decide a threshold score (typically 55%, we help you benchmark) and invite all candidates who score above the threshold for the next rounds of interview.

What experience level can I use this test for?

Each Adaface assessment is customized to your job description/ ideal candidate persona (our subject matter experts will pick the right questions for your assessment from our library of 10000+ questions). This assessment can be customized for any experience level.

Does every candidate get the same questions?

Yes, it makes it much easier for you to compare candidates. Options for MCQ questions and the order of questions are randomized. We have anti-cheating/ proctoring features in place. In our enterprise plan, we also have the option to create multiple versions of the same assessment with questions of similar difficulty levels.