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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.

#161

Post by StavrosK »

brooklyn_ashey wrote: post #145
StavrosK wrote: post #131

Earlier 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? 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 ;

Ah, but Daniel was training, not interviewing :P

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

#162

Post by foo101 »

chrshawkes wrote: post #130
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.

Does one really need to practice to reverse a string? Do we now live in an age where a programmer cannot reverse a string purely from basic knowledge about programming and common-sense?

Reversing a string takes 2 minutes or less even if all you know is how to work with strings and how to write a for-loop.

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

#163

Post by bitL »

0xfeba wrote: post #151
Arubis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, here I was, just happy it's moving from whiteboards, and all these people are complaining about it...

Nope, it's not moving from there. HackerRank is now the step 0 before the whiteboard interviews even start. At best it removes the technical phone interview.

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

#164

Post by dahart »

> I'm hoping ABC's recruitment policy is flexible enough to let me offer alternative, or at least parallel, routes to quantifying my skill in coding [...] Would ABC be willing to work with me to define a better way to check my technical qualifications by choosing one of these projects?

It's good to see someone take the initiative to express this, but IMHO, it would be even better to just take the initiative to contribute to one of the proposed open source projects and put it on your resume, and participate in the Hackerrank part of the interview.

I like the proposals, and I'd probably land on the side of impressed if a candidate I was interested in sent me a letter like this. But, I still need a quick way to screen people, and I also need a set of standard questions that all candidates get so I can compare & rank them. I don't use Hackerrank, but I do ask easy weeder questions in the same style.

Then, after the candidate passes the easy part, I look at their portfolio of work projects and side projects, and consider everything they have to offer.

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

#165

Post by StavrosK »

gedy wrote: post #100
chadash wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no question that some questions are inappropriate for senior hires. For example, if someone comes in with a lot of open source work, I think it's probably wise for the hiring manager to devote some more time and personalize the process a bit since that person has already has signals that they are probably good (or at least more likely to be good than most candidates). But most developers (and I'd venture most…

Sure, valid points, and agree there's a place for this type of screening. I'm mostly referring to when you're experienced, and approached by a company via an on-site recruiter or employee referral. You are busy and not actively looking, but then trying to then feed you through hackerrank quizzes or whiteboards is just so off-putting.

My experience has been worse: After I'd do all that, they said "great, we'd like to hire you at 80% your current salary!". It angers me.

Nowadays I say up-front "I just want to mention this because it's generally been a sticking point and I don't want to waste your time, I'm looking for a salary in the range of $X". That has saved me a whole bunch of time.

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

#166

Post by crdoconnor »

dahart wrote: post #144
bitL wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>There is always a shortage of good jobs.

If their hiring process involves jumping through hoops before being granted permission to interview and if the tasks assigned to you bear almost no relationship to the job at hand, the chances of the job actually being good are low.

Employers that do this kind of thing typically have an entitlement complex and not the smartest. People with an entitlement complex who are not very clever are bad to work for.

>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?

In my case because I have a bunch of open source available that they can just read.

If a company expects me to complete a 1 hour badly thought through exercise that is at best barely related to the job before they grant me permission to talk to them, just exactly how well do you think they'll treat me once I'm actually hired?

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

#167

Post by mseebach »

Evaluating someone based on their GitHub repos isn't trivial at all, and it's not something a (non-developer) recruiter generally can do effectively. At the stage when HackerRank is relevant, the recruiter is trying to decide who to put in front of a technical interviewer.

It's important to keep in mind the big advantage of tools like HackerRank: They're scalable for the employer, allowing the employer to take a chance on more candidates.

Without something like HackerRank, recruiters will tend towards lesser heuristics, such as top schools or top firms on candidates' CVs. While HackerRank has its issues, it's certainly a vastly superior heuristic than the alternative for those many of us that don't have that kind of CVs.

It's also relatively scalable for the applicant, because it is asynchronous, and can be taken whenever convenient. For many people in jobs, taking a phone interview during business hours isn't easy.

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

#168

Post by foo101 »

lettergram wrote: post #112
dragonwriter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HackerRank isn't a test, it's a platform for testing; individual employer tests on that platform can be more or less reasonable.

Alright fair, I intended my meaning to be "HackerRank type of assessments - limited time, basic, etc."

Your comment with the intended meaning is still incorrect.

HackerRank test can be as standard or as non-standard, and as easy or as difficult as the individual employer wishes it to be.

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

#169

Post by Darkstack »

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…

> Even a short phone screen where I just ask someone to code a simple question takes 20-30 minutes of my time (plus however much time I need to get back in the zone), so HackerRank is appealing if only to weed out the very worst candidates.

But you took 20-30 Minutes of their time too, the only difference is that you get a compensation at the end of theses 20-30 min, they don't. If someone told me, "OK , i m gonna waste 3 hours of your time in exchange of a mere promise of a job", i will simply decline the job.I work 9hr/day , I have better things to do with my free time...

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

#170

Post by dragonwriter »

Darkstack wrote: post #169
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…

> Even a short phone screen where I just ask someone to code a simple question takes 20-30 minutes of my time (plus however much time I need to get back in the zone), so HackerRank is appealing if only to weed out the very worst candidates. But you took 20-30 Minutes of their time too, the only difference is that you get a compensation at the end of theses 20-30 min, they don't. If someone told me, "OK , i m gonna wa…

> But you took 20-30 Minutes of their time too

Yeah, with often very high ratios (I've seen above 100:1 in positions where I had information more than once recently) applicants for open positions, hiring simply isn't going to work if it requires symmetric time investment from hiring managers and applicants.

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