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An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

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Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#121

Post by nilkn »

StavrosK wrote: post #117
nilkn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Difficult to work with" is perhaps too harsh a statement. But the candidate is asking for a completely custom treatment at the earliest possible stage of the interview process. The candidate is also assuming that the interviewers aren't aware of the caveats mentioned about standard coding screens/HackerRank exercises. The candidate's proposal also doesn't mirror real-world conditions, because I doubt the job consist…

> just a low-investment screen Low-investment on the part of the employer. They still expect me to spend 90 minutes on proving I have seen a REPL before, which is time I, frankly, don't have. I'm happy to answer/talk about things that relate to my job, but working on puzzles that just happen to be solved more easily by programming has exactly nothing to do with it. > the candidate is asking for a completely custom tr…

I can only speak for where I currently work. Our phone screens take 45 minutes on average rather than 90. If you don't have 45 minutes for a coding phone screen, then you also don't have 45 minutes for anything else you just mentioned, so I actually find your response fairly disingenuous. In fact, you don't have time to interview with any company in any capacity at all.

We actually take great care in examining resumes and CVs before proceeding with a coding screen. We've had plenty of senior developers fail the most basic questions (think FizzBuzz), which is why we conduct these screens.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#122

Post by mox1 »

StavrosK wrote: post #117
nilkn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Difficult to work with" is perhaps too harsh a statement. But the candidate is asking for a completely custom treatment at the earliest possible stage of the interview process. The candidate is also assuming that the interviewers aren't aware of the caveats mentioned about standard coding screens/HackerRank exercises. The candidate's proposal also doesn't mirror real-world conditions, because I doubt the job consist…

> just a low-investment screen Low-investment on the part of the employer. They still expect me to spend 90 minutes on proving I have seen a REPL before, which is time I, frankly, don't have. I'm happy to answer/talk about things that relate to my job, but working on puzzles that just happen to be solved more easily by programming has exactly nothing to do with it. > the candidate is asking for a completely custom tr…

Why are you looking for jobs if you are too busy to spend 90 minutes of effort on applying for that job?

Maybe the whole point of the test is not how well you do, but how you react to being asked to do something you feel is beneath you...

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#123

Post by bitL »

iwangulenko wrote: post #107

Programmer and owner of a technical recruitment agency here. I forked and rewrote the thing to make it more appealing to recruiters: https://gist.github.com/iwangu/b0d8b8e140afdd4e30bb7e401babc... I mainly removed things that sound patronising to me. I think many HR people will just ignore you if you e-mail what OP posted. Once, I wrote a blogpost why programmers don't get jobs due to random factors ("Why software en…

I think your approach would work if there was a shortage of jobs; there is exactly opposite situation right now and HR should adapt or they would end up with a very narrow dissection of what is available. You are often asking accomplished individuals to waste their time on badly compensated job proposals, just because it makes your life easier. No wonder so many programmers think recruiters in this industry are a joke and try to actively avoid them.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#124

Post by rovek »

When looking for a new job I typically run a few applications at a time since companies are so unreliable and, frankly, I don't have the time or inclination for

* 5 x 45 minute phone screens

* 5 x 2-3 hour coding test (some of which will be the same)

* 5 x 3 hour face-to-face interview

Over the course of 2 weeks while attending my current job. Companies should consider this when trying to hire "exceptional" candidates who value their own time.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#125

Post by lucozade »

tty7 wrote: post #52
nine_k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on who you are, having a personalized interview may make perfect sense. I'd say hiring a senior developer or a team lead should always take it.

Agreed, but without knowing the context I responded on this emails face value. I would also worry hiring a team lead/senior dev who appears to be combative from the initial screening

I wouldn't be concerned with their being combative. I'd be concerned that, without any attempt to make sure they knew the full context, they assumed ignorance or stupidity on the part of the hirer.

This kind of approach is fine for a junior. I'd even encourage it because there's an attempt to change the parameters of the problem which is something we often have to teach people as they progress.

For a senior position, not so much. I mean, it might be that they're ignorant or stupid, in which case you've probably dodged a bullet when they don't hire you. Or it might be something else entirely.

A more sensible approach, in my view, would be to ask what they were looking for with the HackerRank test in a subsequent face to face. If they say that they don't have a better way to determine developer competency then, sure, suggest that you may be able to help with that when you join.

If it were me interviewing, I'd be particularly interested in suggestions that a) were developed from successful prior hiring practices and/or b) not so bleeding obvious as "look at their Github page".

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#126

Post by calvinbhai »

Way to go!

IMO If employer is adamant to rely only on cookie cutter first round interviews, then it’s probably not worth joining such places. It’ll be filled with people who are great at cracking such interviews and believing that these cookie cutter interviews are the only way to go.

There will be people on both sides of this debate, pro and anti.

If you don’t believe in solving algorithms/ hackarank type initial interviews, it’s good to challenge such requests.

If you are fine with it, that’s great. You and the employer have the same thinking. And it’ll/ May work great!

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#127

Post by spyspy »

nilkn wrote: post #67
fredley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...If "Tells me when I'm doing something in a way that could potentially be improved, in a polite, validated way" falls under your definition of "Difficult to work with", then perhaps he wouldn't want to work with you anyway. However if you want to hire people to just complete tickets as fast as possible, maybe that's a valid reason to reject the candidate.

"Difficult to work with" is perhaps too harsh a statement. But the candidate is asking for a completely custom treatment at the earliest possible stage of the interview process. The candidate is also assuming that the interviewers aren't aware of the caveats mentioned about standard coding screens/HackerRank exercises. The candidate's proposal also doesn't mirror real-world conditions, because I doubt the job consist…

I have a lot of problems with this paragraph, the same problems I see again and again on both sides of interviews.

> "Difficult to work with" is perhaps too harsh a statement

That's exactly what the OP meant to say, and verbatim what they would have said in an interview debrief. The interviewee wanted some amount of compromise, and all of a sudden they're "difficult to work with". Now everyone else in the room is framing this potential hire as an asshole. There's no coming back from that. I've seen this happen many times. One term of phrase like that and instantly a qualified candidate is out because someone latched onto a single fault and made wild extrapolations about it.

> just a low-investment screen

You have no idea how much of an investment it is. I've had hacker rank problems that I was expected to spend 3 hours on. That's a pretty big investment just to get my foot in the door. Sometimes (read: often) the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. The employer wants me to give it my best when they're not even willing to come up with their own questions.

> uniform across all candidates

I see this a lot as the panacea of interviewing. Sounds good to have everyone on a level playing field. But if you start out with a crappy process, applying it to everyone equally isn't going to get you good talent. As an interviewee, I'll still be bitter about the bullshit you put me through, even if everyone else had to do it.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#128

Post by dsacco »

bitL wrote: post #102
Arubis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "Googlesque excellence" is passing FizzBuzz then I am severely undercompensated.

FizzBuzz is a bit of understatement, most of those tests are alike once you practice a bit and sink into trivial category; some companies actually give you way more difficult questions than what you get at Google/FB etc. and after you pass that terror then present you with an offer where you don't know if you have to laugh or cry. I haven't seen a single company doing that outside top 5 to compensate you properly for…

> I haven't seen a single company doing that outside top 5 to compensate you properly for it.

There are small financial firms which will conduct significantly harder interviews than Facebook/Google. The offers are also commensurately higher (significantly so).

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#129

Post by bitL »

dsacco wrote: post #128
bitL wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FizzBuzz is a bit of understatement, most of those tests are alike once you practice a bit and sink into trivial category; some companies actually give you way more difficult questions than what you get at Google/FB etc. and after you pass that terror then present you with an offer where you don't know if you have to laugh or cry. I haven't seen a single company doing that outside top 5 to compensate you properly for…

> I haven't seen a single company doing that outside top 5 to compensate you properly for it. There are small financial firms which will conduct significantly harder interviews than Facebook/Google. The offers are also commensurately higher (significantly so).

And that's totally fine. If they offer you 500k or work on space ships/self driving car core then I am willing to go through a grueling interview process. If all they offer is 50-80k and a vision of making founders rich, they can go literally stuff themselves.

Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.

#130

Post by chrshawkes »

chadash wrote: post #47

As a hiring manager, I personally don't use HackerRank (or anything similar), but I'm thinking about it. My issue is that many of the people who I come across (most of whom claim to have backgrounds in CS) don't have even basic coding skills. For example, "write a function to reverse a string in a language of your choice" baffles them or takes 20 minutes to write, even though it was meant to be a quick warm-up questi…

How often does one have to reverse a string? What is the purpose of such a dumb test? How often have you had to do such a thing in the real world (outside of tests such as interview questions?)

I suppose you could make the argument we do have to reverse arrays, but strings? Give me a break, only idiot programmers spend their time practicing for useless programming interview questions.

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