Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
1–10 of 179 posts
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#2Candidates who don't have a portfolio with code I can look at: hope you like homework.
I don't like asking for unpaid labor, but I also won't risk my team blowing hours interviewing someone who has no chance of being successful here.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#3As a candidate, I kind of like the homework thing. It's a lot closer to what you'd actually be doing on the job compared to white board tests, and interviewing is a pretty big time commitment on both sides so I don't feel taken advantage of if it's not crazy (the interviewer has to spend a lot of time on it too)
Also, I think it's really a stretch to call it abusive. If you feel like the test is too much of a time commitment or you don't think the company is serious, you can just not do it you know?
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#4By assigning homework, companies are also missing out on an opportunity to get to know how the candidate thinks and works on a problem.
It's as if you're scheduling a full-day interview but only being present for half of it.
And the thing is, especially if the opening is for a less senior position, observing the person while they are completing the assignment can help you get a much better measure of the person's skills, and can also prevent them having to toil for hours with no feedback about whether they're on the right track. If you're observing, the candidate might come up with a suboptimal solution, but with a few gentle nudges, they might correct course and prove themselves to be a very capable person. And you would have totally missed that if it were homework.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#5Candidates who don't have a portfolio with code I can look at: hope you like homework. I don't like asking for unpaid labor, but I also won't risk my team blowing hours interviewing someone who has no chance of being successful here.
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Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#6Candidates who don't have a portfolio with code I can look at: hope you like homework. I don't like asking for unpaid labor, but I also won't risk my team blowing hours interviewing someone who has no chance of being successful here.
Good luck getting a good engineer
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#7I'd rather have a weekend homework assignment than a loop of coding interviews. Much more reasonable assessment of skills & potential, in my opinion. Happy to do whatever algorithm madness thrown my way in that case. It's a real tough gig to solve some ambiguous algorithm problem in 40 minutes on a whiteboard, analyse it, and then discuss optimality. Gets worse if the loop is serial algorithms interviews.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#8Or as an alternative -- give them something legitimately beneficial to your company to work on, pay them standard consulting rates. This puts the impetus on the company to have fairly high certainty the candidate is qualified before the take-home, and the candidate gets compensated for their time even if a hire isn't made.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#9As a candidate, I kind of like the homework thing. It's a lot closer to what you'd actually be doing on the job compared to white board tests, and interviewing is a pretty big time commitment on both sides so I don't feel taken advantage of if it's not crazy (the interviewer has to spend a lot of time on it too) Also, I think it's really a stretch to call it abusive . If you feel like the test is too much of a time c…
Something that takes an evening (whether code, writing, etc.) seems generally reasonable assuming that it serves as a reasonably effective screener. After all, some homework for an interview such as researching the company and their market space is typical. Something that takes 40 hours? Not so much.
Re: Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments
#10Candidates who don't have a portfolio with code I can look at: hope you like homework. I don't like asking for unpaid labor, but I also won't risk my team blowing hours interviewing someone who has no chance of being successful here.
Then pay them. Make an honest calculation of what it's worth to you, and if you can give them something below that number that makes the candidate happy then everyone wins. If it saves you time (money) then share the wealth.