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A few years back an SF startup asked me to prepare a presentation as part of the final round of interviews. It was supposed to be something I like to do. I chos

A few years back an SF startup asked me to prepare a presentation as part of the final round of interviews. It was supposed to be something I like to do. I chose making pizza on my charcoal grill using my KettlePizza [0]. At the time, our family tradition was to make homemade pizza on Friday nights so it wasn't much of an imposition to snap a few photos during the process and slap it together into a Powerpoint. Overall the presentation portion was a decent experience. I presented for 10-15 minutes and the folks in the room asked questions for about that long. I didn't get an offer because of "concerns around culture & team fit." I'm pretty sure that wasn't a result of my presentation, but, rather, that I indicated I didn't care much for death marches (and they were clearly on one at the time). Had I put 10 hours into the presentation like Op I would have been annoyed. But an hour wasn't bad. Altogether, I think it's not a bad way to facilitate conversation and allow a broader group of folks to participate. [0] https://www.kettlepizza.com/ https://www.kettlepizza.com/

ghaff 6y ago
While I'm not generally a fan of test projects, etc., I have to admit that a writing and/or presentation sample is pretty much necessary for some jobs. That said, I probably wouldn't assign one so if a person already had examples, that would probably be fine. (And for a job that requires such things, they typically would.)
- redshirtrob 6y ago
  This was a developer job. I doubt making presentations was a key part of the job. As such, they emphasized that I shouldn't spend a lot of time on the presentation. It functioned as a conversation starter. For that it worked well.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Makes sense. Senior developers do often give a fair number of presentations to external audiences but I wouldn't consider it a core competency of most developer jobs. (Though general ability to communicate can be important.)

ghaff 6y ago

While I'm not generally a fan of test projects, etc., I have to admit that a writing and/or presentation sample is pretty much necessary for some jobs. That said, I probably wouldn't assign one so if a person already had examples, that would probably be fine. (And for a job that requires such things, they typically would.)

redshirtrob 6y ago
This was a developer job. I doubt making presentations was a key part of the job. As such, they emphasized that I shouldn't spend a lot of time on the presentation. It functioned as a conversation starter. For that it worked well.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Makes sense. Senior developers do often give a fair number of presentations to external audiences but I wouldn't consider it a core competency of most developer jobs. (Though general ability to communicate can be important.)