It is difficult to believe that the person who knows how to sling slang like "chops" (technical command and facility in a given domain)is the same person who is only just hearing of HackerRank through an employer's request. Also saying condescending things like "cute little" in your response takes away from your earnestness cred and makes you seem angry. No one wants to start off angry with a new hire. That said, you have a right to be angry when an employer chooses to "batch process" you like just another piece of data. While your proposal is great and it shows you go above and beyond, and employer who uses HackerRank isn't looking for above and beyond. Use it to weed out employers who won't meet you halfway as a partner- the way you want to be met. If you are looking to work with a Willy Wonka, consider the thought and care that went into his job interview.
An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
141–150 of 271 posts
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Our phone screens take 45 minutes on average rather than 90 Even phone screens are better than "Here's a HackerRank link because I don't want to spend time talking to you, enjoy the next hour-and-a-half solving riddles".
I don't think I fully appreciated that HackerRank does not involve the direct participation from anyone at the hiring company. I wouldn't be on board with that, and that certainly makes more more sympathetic to the OP.
Yeah, that's what galls me about it. They even give you (the proverbial you) tests so you literally have to spend zero effort, yet you tell the interviewee to spend 90 minutes on it because it costs you nothing. If you want me to spend time on your process, at least spend that time with me. I want to learn about you as much as you want to learn about me, but you don't see me sending you a Google form with 300 questions about your company to fill out.
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#143You want a personalized interview, styled exactly for you ? I would be a 'no' if i were interviewing me. You obviously can program but this makes you appear to be someone who would be difficult to work with.
Yea, silly people are living in the misconception that companies are any way interested in their personality. While it's really just about to obey, and follow command. People have to understand that they have to fit the soulless masses and have to be tested accordingly...
Filed under sad-but-true. Worse, your ability to code doesn't make you special, and doesn't qualify you as an interesting human being to anyone outside of tech recruiters, and only then if you are able to produce code on demand in front of a whiteboard.
Thankfully, as a human being, you are not your ability to code. More importantly though, then it also means that people who can't code are worth just as much as you as human beings (more, if they've managed to learn social graces). If you don't hold it to be true, then code or GTFO.
Look for places like the Recurse center in NY that can help you find yourself in the context of being able to code, or more traditional non-traditional approaches like backpacking though India, or taking LSD in the Haight in the 60's (anyone got a time machine?).
If you'd like friends (who will be interested in your personality), go find some. Outside of work. Bonus points if you manage to find some that can't code.
Hint: companies are interested in your personality - if you come across as this caustic in a phone screen or in person interview, I'd be surprised if you get invited back. (Or at least they should be; Google's current HR woes are their own creation.)
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#144Programmer 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 jok…
> I think your approach would work if there was a shortage of jobs
There is always a shortage of good jobs. You can fight the process all you want, if any job at all will do, and you don't care how long it takes to get it.
> You are often asking accomplished individuals to waste their time on badly compensated job proposals
What do you mean by badly compensated?
Why would you assume someone else knows anything about your accomplishment and credentials and trusts the skills you list on your resume before you've demonstrated anything?
Also, if you're good, then why does a low bar for entry scare or offend you? A screen for basic aptitude is narrowing the field and removing people from competition who can talk well but don't have programming experience. That seems like an advantage for anyone who can pass the easy tests.
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
> Why are you looking for jobs if you are too busy to spend 90 minutes of effort on applying for that job? I didn't say I'm too busy to apply, I said I'm too busy to spend 90 minutes on useless tests. > but how you react to being asked to do something you feel is beneath you... You know what a great test for that would be? Ask the applicant to wash your car.
Well, washing cars turned out to be the point for The Karate Kid... and humility before technique. I agree that few employers will be like Mr.Miyagi though ;
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#146I worked in a job a couple of years ago with a small team that was hiring quite fast so it was typical to have to evaluate 10 applicants a week. Since as leads and seniors we were very busy Hackerrank was a useful way to evaluate lots of people without much effort and easily compare them by “score”. That said I regret it because the results were not as good. Every candidate is different enough that each interview turns out completely different. I think a better policy is if you’re too busy to give people the attention they need as they go through the pipeline - just wait until you’re not busy if possible.
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#147My regular policy is to ghost any employer who throws a HackerRank test at me. This is usually a strong indicator that the work environment is incompatible with my values.
I politely tell them I'd be happy to have a call or phone screen with them, but I don't do automated puzzle-type tests. This gives them an opportunity to give me their side of the matter and also gives them a signal that at least one candidate dislikes automated puzzle-solving tests.
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#148As 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.
I'm not sure if you have ever been involved in the hiring process from the first stage of screening resumes, but my experience has been that when you post a developer job, many people will apply with very weak coding skills and those people need to be weeded out. Some of them have strong-looking resumes, but I often come across people who stretch the truth on their resumes. So when I do a phone screen, I start out with a basic question that surprisingly weeds out a lot of people. I let candidates code in a language of their choice after hearing the question.
Is reversing a string something I do in the real world? Very very rarely if ever. But it's not meant to be a question that simulates a real world coding problem. The point is that it's a very simple problem that anyone proficient in almost any coding language should be able to do. And I don't know anyone I've worked with who wouldn't be able to do this in 5 minutes or less, with or without practice.
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
> Why are you looking for jobs if you are too busy to spend 90 minutes of effort on applying for that job? I didn't say I'm too busy to apply, I said I'm too busy to spend 90 minutes on useless tests. > but how you react to being asked to do something you feel is beneath you... You know what a great test for that would be? Ask the applicant to wash your car.
> useless tests
These tests aren't useless. Tons of candidates have never seen a REPL before and are totally unable to solve even a trivial coding assignment.
I suppose your company is too clever to waste their time on such useless tests? Who at your firm wastes hours interviewing candidates who have no ability to code?
Re: An employer asked me to do a HackerRank test. Here's my alternative proposal.
#150I wonder what happened to human discernment. It’s like people think liars get away without detection. The only reason a person who bullshits an interview gets hired is because the interview was a formality to begin with; eg. Friend of management who the whole interview board knew was BSing but also value their paycheck too much to object. Yea, we don’t want that situation, and clamping down on nepotism etc. at the candidate level is just wrong. “Boo hoo, too many candidates, lets engineer a rube goldberg machine to make us feel objective.” Just treat candidates as people...
I can’t imagine hiring to scale product development inside such a dirty room. The most successful businesses I know of simply don’t complain about these things, nor have personnel problems; people do the work that needs to get done with a good attitude etc, with little awareness of title... acting more like “mom and pop” businesses who value relationships.
How is any company building an awesome thing with an awesome team, with word of mouth not bringing a torrent of personal references from the rank and file? The good ones have that going on in my experience, there is just a glut of shit rung employers (and candidates) here shaping our views toward defensiveness.