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We recently started using the 'assignment' alternative to interviews and have had great success with it, although only a couple hires to go by so far. One issu

We recently started using the 'assignment' alternative to interviews and have had great success with it, although only a couple hires to go by so far. One issue I have with it though is that it asks a lot of candidates in terms of their time. Paying for that time seems like a great solution, as well as providing the other benefits you mentioned. Will definitely try this next time we're hiring.

zerr 11y ago
Yes, always propose paid assignments, otherwise you'll miss many good candidates. Many of them will not explicitly refuse, but just move your company below in the priority queue... This happened to me - i.e. I did move the company back and eventually accepted another offer. If they had proposed me the paid project (instead of unpaid one), I'd immediately started working on it and continue the process...
pc86 11y ago
I did a(n unpaid) coding assignment for my current job several years ago. Estimated time to complete was 1 hour, but I probably spent half my weekend on it because I wanted to make a good impression. Once I was in a position to offer advice and assist in the interview process, getting rid of that altogether was the first thing I did. It took time, I got nothing out of it, and all it showed the company was that given 40-50x longer than necessary I could produce a working product.
- tempestn 11y ago
  Yes, this is another problem with it. However, from my (albeit limited) experience, it still beats classical interviews. Bringing people in and enforcing a time limit could help, but many people get very nervous in that type of 'exam' situation, so you lose a lot of the benefit (which is primarily seeing how they work in the real world, out of a pressure-filled interview situation).^ Personally, I prefer to make the assignments less open-ended than the ones in the OP. That way hopefully there's only so much time that could really be reasonably spent on them. It's still an issue, but (over-) paying for the "2 hours" helps too. The remaining downside is worth it in my opinion for the far better filtering it provides. (Also, classical interviews are no picnic for many people either. I know plenty of people who would rather spend all weekend at home working on something than be subjected to a regular interview.) ^Also we're all-remote, so in our particular case we really couldn't do that even if we wanted to.
tempestn 11y ago
Also, the OP makes a great point that the assignment should be a small, encapsulated, made-up thing. (IE, not actual work you need done.) It may seem like a waste to pay for such a thing, but you can just think of it as a (small) recruitment expense.

zerr 11y ago

Yes, always propose paid assignments, otherwise you'll miss many good candidates. Many of them will not explicitly refuse, but just move your company below in the priority queue... This happened to me - i.e. I did move the company back and eventually accepted another offer. If they had proposed me the paid project (instead of unpaid one), I'd immediately started working on it and continue the process...

pc86 11y ago

I did a(n unpaid) coding assignment for my current job several years ago. Estimated time to complete was 1 hour, but I probably spent half my weekend on it because I wanted to make a good impression. Once I was in a position to offer advice and assist in the interview process, getting rid of that altogether was the first thing I did. It took time, I got nothing out of it, and all it showed the company was that given 40-50x longer than necessary I could produce a working product.

tempestn 11y ago
Yes, this is another problem with it. However, from my (albeit limited) experience, it still beats classical interviews. Bringing people in and enforcing a time limit could help, but many people get very nervous in that type of 'exam' situation, so you lose a lot of the benefit (which is primarily seeing how they work in the real world, out of a pressure-filled interview situation).^ Personally, I prefer to make the assignments less open-ended than the ones in the OP. That way hopefully there's only so much time that could really be reasonably spent on them. It's still an issue, but (over-) paying for the "2 hours" helps too. The remaining downside is worth it in my opinion for the far better filtering it provides. (Also, classical interviews are no picnic for many people either. I know plenty of people who would rather spend all weekend at home working on something than be subjected to a regular interview.) ^Also we're all-remote, so in our particular case we really couldn't do that even if we wanted to.

tempestn 11y ago

Also, the OP makes a great point that the assignment should be a small, encapsulated, made-up thing. (IE, not actual work you need done.) It may seem like a waste to pay for such a thing, but you can just think of it as a (small) recruitment expense.