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That's why I think take-home exercises are a much better way to evaluate candidates. Give them the exercise and enough time and you will figure out: 1) How goo

That's why I think take-home exercises are a much better way to evaluate candidates. Give them the exercise and enough time and you will figure out: 1) How good they are 2) How much they actually care about the job offer -- the more detail and the more passion they put in the exercise, the more into the job they are.

legopiece 6y ago
Totally agreed. I've been in the position to evaluate several take-home exercises during the years and they always produced good results
- eNTi 6y ago
  Doesn't that tell you that the method of hiring is flawed in the first place? If you care to weed out bad candiates, what help are 100% perfectly fine take-home exercises? The only thing that tells you is, that all of your candidates are viable in the first place. Just go into an interview with THAT assumption and ask the right questions. Why do so many companies assume that people who try to get hired for a certain job don't meet the basic requirements? That gotta be the rule not the exception? That's just a bad faith assumption. Just make sure your hire fits into your culture and give them sufficient probation time to grow into your codebase.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    > > produced good results > what help are 100% perfectly fine take-home exercises? The only thing that tells you is, that all of your candidates are viable in the first place. I think you might have interpreted that, in a different way than what was meant.
- reagent_finder 6y ago
  Could you provide a bit more info? How long were the exercises? Were the applicants evaluated more based on their results or possible writeups? How much did their CV weigh compared to the take-home exercises?
tpxl 6y ago
Give 20 candidates take home exercises, they're all passionate and put a lot of work into it, then you'll reject 19 of them. The input required for this type of interview is heavily skewed in favor of the company. No thanks.
- mirekrusin 6y ago
  Why not drastically different approach - ie. instead of active technical interview process on company's side, just put up few dozens of open source projects/libraries that are being used inside company and leave it as technical interview sandbox. Keep brownie points on pull requests to unlock "you gained <<passed technical interview>> badge" a'la stack overflow or do one off evaluation based on contribution when candidate applies. Stack overflow contributions can be equally taken under account to gain points and arguably they have badge system that does the job for you already. Github could introduce something similar and wipe out "anxiety interview" completely, if they wanted to. There is really no reason to do technical interview when you can inspect open source work. For people who don't have contributions yet, open source libraries/projects by the company should be made available. Seems like win-win for everybody.
  - eNTi 6y ago
    Unless you are looking for a "senior developer with x years of experience". I have a live, hobbies and family. I don't care to spend most of my free time fixing code in some obscure library I'm not ever going to use only to stand a chance to get a different job in the future. How in the world did current developers EVER get ANY job? Who gives developers the chance to grow these days?
    - reagent_finder 6y ago
      It's a "foot in" problem, I feel. Shit companies have shit interviews and give out shit workloads to MAYBE get a foot in the door. You can follow along or be proactive, for instance start a new github account just for interviews, do code wars challenges, write a blog and just link your writeups, github and blog to applications. Along with your CV with major projects etc. of course. Most people I know who work at big firms got calls from friends or friends of friends to interviews, so spending time socializing the local hacker circles is probably going to be worthwhile as well. If you have life, hobbies and family, you should still be able to schedule 1-4 hours a week to job hunting, much more if you don't have a job of course. It's not pretty or much fun, but it's certainly doable.
bananaface 6y ago
Aren't you worried about filtering out good candidates who have enough options that they won't spend time on your test?

legopiece 6y ago

Totally agreed. I've been in the position to evaluate several take-home exercises during the years and they always produced good results

eNTi 6y ago
Doesn't that tell you that the method of hiring is flawed in the first place? If you care to weed out bad candiates, what help are 100% perfectly fine take-home exercises? The only thing that tells you is, that all of your candidates are viable in the first place. Just go into an interview with THAT assumption and ask the right questions. Why do so many companies assume that people who try to get hired for a certain job don't meet the basic requirements? That gotta be the rule not the exception? That's just a bad faith assumption. Just make sure your hire fits into your culture and give them sufficient probation time to grow into your codebase.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  > > produced good results > what help are 100% perfectly fine take-home exercises? The only thing that tells you is, that all of your candidates are viable in the first place. I think you might have interpreted that, in a different way than what was meant.
reagent_finder 6y ago
Could you provide a bit more info? How long were the exercises? Were the applicants evaluated more based on their results or possible writeups? How much did their CV weigh compared to the take-home exercises?

tpxl 6y ago

Give 20 candidates take home exercises, they're all passionate and put a lot of work into it, then you'll reject 19 of them. The input required for this type of interview is heavily skewed in favor of the company. No thanks.

mirekrusin 6y ago
Why not drastically different approach - ie. instead of active technical interview process on company's side, just put up few dozens of open source projects/libraries that are being used inside company and leave it as technical interview sandbox. Keep brownie points on pull requests to unlock "you gained <<passed technical interview>> badge" a'la stack overflow or do one off evaluation based on contribution when candidate applies. Stack overflow contributions can be equally taken under account to gain points and arguably they have badge system that does the job for you already. Github could introduce something similar and wipe out "anxiety interview" completely, if they wanted to. There is really no reason to do technical interview when you can inspect open source work. For people who don't have contributions yet, open source libraries/projects by the company should be made available. Seems like win-win for everybody.
- eNTi 6y ago
  Unless you are looking for a "senior developer with x years of experience". I have a live, hobbies and family. I don't care to spend most of my free time fixing code in some obscure library I'm not ever going to use only to stand a chance to get a different job in the future. How in the world did current developers EVER get ANY job? Who gives developers the chance to grow these days?
  - reagent_finder 6y ago
    It's a "foot in" problem, I feel. Shit companies have shit interviews and give out shit workloads to MAYBE get a foot in the door. You can follow along or be proactive, for instance start a new github account just for interviews, do code wars challenges, write a blog and just link your writeups, github and blog to applications. Along with your CV with major projects etc. of course. Most people I know who work at big firms got calls from friends or friends of friends to interviews, so spending time socializing the local hacker circles is probably going to be worthwhile as well. If you have life, hobbies and family, you should still be able to schedule 1-4 hours a week to job hunting, much more if you don't have a job of course. It's not pretty or much fun, but it's certainly doable.

bananaface 6y ago

Aren't you worried about filtering out good candidates who have enough options that they won't spend time on your test?