4 ms·

There is. Take a set of realistic, representative tasks from your day to day work, decouple it from the context as much as possible to limit the need company sp

There is. Take a set of realistic, representative tasks from your day to day work, decouple it from the context as much as possible to limit the need company specific services, software or knowledge while performing the task. There's a few reasons this is rare: * Setting up a test like this requires prep work, whereas a chat, recycling old tests and downloading questions from the internet does not. * It's rare for hirers to evaluate or be evaluated on their own hiring process. * Lots of developers want to cargo cult Google's hiring process so they ask you to whiteboard algorithms.

richmarr 9y ago
Absolutely. I'm not going to name or link, but this is a service we've started providing and have a growing library of assessment techniques (and analytics on the effectiveness of those techniques). This reduces the prep-work required. The aim is to get to the point where you can say, e.g. "I need a Finance Director for an SME" and we can pre-populate a set of sensible defaults for you to tweak if desired. Baby steps though.. Once we build out those reports we'll also be able to report back to senior management on hiring manager performance. Metrics like typical time-to-hire & volumes etc. but also whether there's unusual demographic bias, the satisfaction of rejected candidates, and some others. I'd also like to make those metrics public (companies would have to opt-in).
brango 9y ago
This is what we do. We created a small programming test that's very representative of 80% of our work. Candidates are asked to only spend 2 hours on it. If they can follow simple instructions and write a reasonable implementation we'll have a face-to-face. This saves us a huge amount of time and I don't feel it's overly burdensome on candidates.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >I don't feel it's overly burdensome on candidates. I do. After doing a couple of these "2 hour" projects from companies I have a suspicion were not even really serious about hiring and not even receiving a courtesy rejection email I swore off them forever. These days I just point the company to my github and am explicit that if that isn't enough to grant me a face to face I probably don't want to work there.
  - osi 9y ago
    agreed. if it is a "2 hour" project, have that be part of the on-site interview (with the expectation that people might not complete it)
    - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
      I applied to one position here on a HN job thread a bit back. Looked right up my alley. Doing IoT, 3d modeling, circuit design, and glue code. So, I did the initial phone screen. Then they gave me the 'zinger': we want you to make a webapp for us. We expect this will take 8-12 hours (?!). I responded back, that's billable time there. That would require me to take PTO at my current job, and do your work unpaid. And that, I will not do. I kindly told them where they could put their job. (They still advertise jobs on the monthly, but they seem legit aside that onerous 1.5 days of work. And no, I won't mention whom. Hopefully they'll rethink their policies, but alas..)
      - ryandrake 9y ago
        On behalf of many, many people: Thank you! An 8-12 hour unpaid work assignment is an entirely unreasonable request.
        crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        Sure thing! Yeah, I did ask around in their area with fellow engineer-y types. They are a legit company, and the webapp wasn't a way to get free work. Think of it as a standards approach, rather than bulletpoint resumes that verge on untruth. To be honest, I'd prefer they have a sit-down with me. They can do their fizzbuzz or linked list test, but I want to get a feel of the problems they're fighting with. I've always liked deep technical discussions, and how I would do it vs how they would/did it. It's a bit more subjective, but I would think that discussing technical aspects and asking how I (interviewee) would do it. I offered an IoT project Ive developed myself in lieu of it, so they could comment on my code quality. They declined that, and wanted their webapp. They're missing out :) Although I've an interview with GitLab coming up. Everything I've seen how they operate and treat their people is just awesome. Regardless if I'm a good fit for the position they're offering, I still think highly of them. :)
- gilleain 9y ago
  We do the same. It's amazing to me how many people with superficially impressive CVs do one or more of: * Cheat * Fail to follow simple instructions * Write no tests for there code (even the given examples!) * Just horribly fail to implement an algorithm All in all, it's just a filter to be used before proper face-to-face interviews.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    > Write no tests for there code (even the given examples!) Just curious, do the instructions ask for tests? If one of these "programming quizzes" asked me to implement algorithm XYZ, I would follow it to the letter and implement only the algorithm.
    - gilleain 9y ago
      we don't ask them to actually provide their tests, but implementing a non-trivial algorithm without tests is optimistic at best. we give them a couple of examples (input, output) pairs - surely you would at least run your implementation past these, right?
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    > Write no tests for their[sp] code (even the given examples!) Well, I've been on the fence on this one. With imperative languages, testing is pretty much a requirement because of side effects and scope-creep (nahh, throw it into global). Tests can be a good sanity check for simple checks like "I fixed a bug where X is supposed to give 22. Lets verify that"... But the problem is the tests are then code that can update and rot as main code changes occur. I've preferred a more functional method. I don't want to test - I want to prove a function handles its inputs and provides the correct outputs. Unless there's a good reason for state , I prefer keeping functions clean. And even then, with state (say, a tally function for bandwidth), I prefer to have the variable updated with its own function. Keeps clean/nonclean separate. Now.. one thing that's absolutely not acceptable is not commenting code. "Magic sequence in perl doing 6 things unintuitively" is not code comments. :(
    - 9y ago

richmarr 9y ago

Absolutely. I'm not going to name or link, but this is a service we've started providing and have a growing library of assessment techniques (and analytics on the effectiveness of those techniques). This reduces the prep-work required. The aim is to get to the point where you can say, e.g. "I need a Finance Director for an SME" and we can pre-populate a set of sensible defaults for you to tweak if desired. Baby steps though.. Once we build out those reports we'll also be able to report back to senior management on hiring manager performance. Metrics like typical time-to-hire & volumes etc. but also whether there's unusual demographic bias, the satisfaction of rejected candidates, and some others. I'd also like to make those metrics public (companies would have to opt-in).

brango 9y ago

This is what we do. We created a small programming test that's very representative of 80% of our work. Candidates are asked to only spend 2 hours on it. If they can follow simple instructions and write a reasonable implementation we'll have a face-to-face. This saves us a huge amount of time and I don't feel it's overly burdensome on candidates.

crdoconnor 9y ago
>I don't feel it's overly burdensome on candidates. I do. After doing a couple of these "2 hour" projects from companies I have a suspicion were not even really serious about hiring and not even receiving a courtesy rejection email I swore off them forever. These days I just point the company to my github and am explicit that if that isn't enough to grant me a face to face I probably don't want to work there.
- osi 9y ago
  agreed. if it is a "2 hour" project, have that be part of the on-site interview (with the expectation that people might not complete it)
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    I applied to one position here on a HN job thread a bit back. Looked right up my alley. Doing IoT, 3d modeling, circuit design, and glue code. So, I did the initial phone screen. Then they gave me the 'zinger': we want you to make a webapp for us. We expect this will take 8-12 hours (?!). I responded back, that's billable time there. That would require me to take PTO at my current job, and do your work unpaid. And that, I will not do. I kindly told them where they could put their job. (They still advertise jobs on the monthly, but they seem legit aside that onerous 1.5 days of work. And no, I won't mention whom. Hopefully they'll rethink their policies, but alas..)
    - ryandrake 9y ago
      On behalf of many, many people: Thank you! An 8-12 hour unpaid work assignment is an entirely unreasonable request.
      - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        Sure thing! Yeah, I did ask around in their area with fellow engineer-y types. They are a legit company, and the webapp wasn't a way to get free work. Think of it as a standards approach, rather than bulletpoint resumes that verge on untruth. To be honest, I'd prefer they have a sit-down with me. They can do their fizzbuzz or linked list test, but I want to get a feel of the problems they're fighting with. I've always liked deep technical discussions, and how I would do it vs how they would/did it. It's a bit more subjective, but I would think that discussing technical aspects and asking how I (interviewee) would do it. I offered an IoT project Ive developed myself in lieu of it, so they could comment on my code quality. They declined that, and wanted their webapp. They're missing out :) Although I've an interview with GitLab coming up. Everything I've seen how they operate and treat their people is just awesome. Regardless if I'm a good fit for the position they're offering, I still think highly of them. :)
gilleain 9y ago
We do the same. It's amazing to me how many people with superficially impressive CVs do one or more of: * Cheat * Fail to follow simple instructions * Write no tests for there code (even the given examples!) * Just horribly fail to implement an algorithm All in all, it's just a filter to be used before proper face-to-face interviews.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  > Write no tests for there code (even the given examples!) Just curious, do the instructions ask for tests? If one of these "programming quizzes" asked me to implement algorithm XYZ, I would follow it to the letter and implement only the algorithm.
  - gilleain 9y ago
    we don't ask them to actually provide their tests, but implementing a non-trivial algorithm without tests is optimistic at best. we give them a couple of examples (input, output) pairs - surely you would at least run your implementation past these, right?
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  > Write no tests for their[sp] code (even the given examples!) Well, I've been on the fence on this one. With imperative languages, testing is pretty much a requirement because of side effects and scope-creep (nahh, throw it into global). Tests can be a good sanity check for simple checks like "I fixed a bug where X is supposed to give 22. Lets verify that"... But the problem is the tests are then code that can update and rot as main code changes occur. I've preferred a more functional method. I don't want to test - I want to prove a function handles its inputs and provides the correct outputs. Unless there's a good reason for state , I prefer keeping functions clean. And even then, with state (say, a tally function for bandwidth), I prefer to have the variable updated with its own function. Keeps clean/nonclean separate. Now.. one thing that's absolutely not acceptable is not commenting code. "Magic sequence in perl doing 6 things unintuitively" is not code comments. :(
  - 9y ago