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The business of takehome assessments

careerfair.io

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Re: The business of takehome assessments

#31

Post by bee_rider »

maxsilver wrote: post #11
Rinzler89 wrote: post #2

>I’m 27 and single. There lies the biggest advantage of a takehome assessment for me: I get to spend more time on it than someone with a wife and two kids. I noticed the same thing. It seems take homes are mainly geared towards pre-selecting young single people with a lot of free time to code on the side besides their main job and other responsibilities, or who have no other responsibilities. Now I'm also single and…

> It seems take homes are mainly geared towards pre-selecting young single people with a lot of free time to code on the side besides their main job and other responsibilities, or who have no other responsibilities. (snip) I question the future of my career in tech, how will I be able to compete for new jobs later when I won't be, and take homes will be normalized? My counterpoint to this is that takehome tests are g…

How’s your career going?

I’m often worried that I’ll look like a dummy when I have to look up basic loop syntax. I’m not dumb, and I’m somewhat experienced… I just write code in Python, Matlab, Fortran, Bash, whatever else. It is shocking that the basic shape of syntax can be so different!

And also the degree to which it doesn’t actually matter. It’s just when starting a new file. My brain needs a little bit of syntax around to get locked into the language I think.

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#32

Post by ElevenLathe »

kevmo314 wrote: post #23
michaelt wrote: post #4

One of the major problems with take home tests is the rampant cheating. It's been a long time since I've been on the job market - but even a decade ago, I had third-party recruiters who would forward me a take home test... and another successful candidate's solution, "for reference". And even if candidate doesn't get external help, I'm extremely sceptical about time limits. Nothing stops someone spending 6 hours on a…

> Nothing stops someone spending 6 hours on a "2 hour" take home test I once got rejected from a YC company because I responded more than three hours after a two hour take home test was given. So you certainly could stop them. Doesn't really leave the best impression of the company though. And if you're curious I wasn't actually working on it for three hours, I just started late :)

This selects for people that are chained to their email and slavishly do whatever the company says immediately -- probably intentional, and you dodged a bullet.

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#33

Post by otherme123 »

aiauthoritydev wrote: post #19

Having interviewed hundreds of consultants and been interviewed by many and having seen the cheating etc. from all sides I have first hand opinion on this. Sadly how people recruit is completely broken for most companies that are not FAANG etc. (It is broken for FAANG as well but in a different way). As I often say "you need to win, not win an argument". Similarly you want candidates that can be good productive membe…

I don't know about your first point. We recently hired two persons who came from VeryBigBusiness Inc. and VeryImportantCorp Inc., so I assumed that they were at least slightly above the average. Soon it became evident that the only field were they both excel was the art of arranging unending meetings, being very vocal in those meetings, looking always too stressed and too busy, getting themselves in key projects while avoiding the day to day work, and never getting any real work done.

One of them was causing such friction with endless meetings and mail chains, that a project she coordinated that was a quagmire for six months was finished in the two weeks after she left.

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#34

Post by creer »

mgkimsal wrote: post #8
michaelt wrote: post #4

One of the major problems with take home tests is the rampant cheating. It's been a long time since I've been on the job market - but even a decade ago, I had third-party recruiters who would forward me a take home test... and another successful candidate's solution, "for reference". And even if candidate doesn't get external help, I'm extremely sceptical about time limits. Nothing stops someone spending 6 hours on a…

> Nothing stops someone spending 6 hours on a "2 hour" take home test, producing a better solution than someone who followed the time limit strictly. Unless you can ... demonstrate you only spent two hours. It's pretty rare you can do that, but... several years back I got a callback on an interview, and they forwarded me the 'coding test' portion. I got it around 1:30p, and I emailed them back the finished product ar…

It's like most things can be done right - If anyone just cared to! And when I run into something done right, it's so refreshing.

But most things we interact with are done half-assedly, or are MVPs, or are deliberately made to a stupid spec, or don't prioritize the user, etc... there are a million ways to mess it up - usually by not even trying - and the result is draining.

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#35

Post by teeray »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #2

>I’m 27 and single. There lies the biggest advantage of a takehome assessment for me: I get to spend more time on it than someone with a wife and two kids. I noticed the same thing. It seems take homes are mainly geared towards pre-selecting young single people with a lot of free time to code on the side besides their main job and other responsibilities, or who have no other responsibilities. Now I'm also single and…

> mainly geared towards pre-selecting young single people with a lot of free time

Which tells you exactly how exploitive they will be with that free time. You'll onboard, it'll be good for a bit, then suddenly there will be surprise crunch-mode that will never end.

> when you sink many hours in them and then just get ghosted, not even a rejection message

This will manifest in a thank you of a layoff after all those crunch hours.

> first you solve this take home for us, then we can have a talk

"Cool, I can take on that contract. I'll put together a quote for you and I'll get started. Who should I send my W-9 to?" Many will, of course, balk at this, which tells you everything you need to know about them. The good ones will pay it. Set your boundaries.

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#36

Post by dec0dedab0de »

we had one of these at a previous job, and I was vocally against it the whole time. Even though it did weed out a few clueless people that seemed to know what they were doing during the interview.

the project was to make a django app for storing your pokemon application, and a script to download the list of pokemon from an api. So atleast it was fun, but i hated turning people down who took the time to do it.

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#37

Post by ilc »

It is at the point where for me when they ask for a take home, it is a self selecting: Thanks but no thanks.

I can spend time answering your take-home, or trying to get other interviews. From what I've seen on take homes: Other interviews are strongly EV+.

Before you go: But you never got a job off a take home, that's why. I did. It was one of the worst managed misfits I've had. I am sure others thrived there, for me it was a living hell, that didn't even pay that great.

So... Much like requiring a suit to interview and a few other things. It goes in my bin of "Your company has performed self selection."

Note: I will leetcode, at least there is a human there, we're talking, interacting, and I am learning about the company.. But most of all, that feel of: I put up and hour, you put up an hour. Let's talk. Is very real.

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#38

Post by ativzzz »

I had a previous job that paid me for the time it took to do a takehome interview. (it ended up being right at the minimum before having to report it as taxable income). I highly welcome this, as it signals a commitment from the company that they're serious about the candidate

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#39

Post by ketzu »

jcomis wrote: post #24

These are/were rampant in product design hiring. Especially "startups" or smaller companies. The direction is always the same "spend max a couple hours!" but the understanding is clearly you must spend significantly more. Some are cute with clearly non work related problem, like a previous company I worked for that did "design an app for a time machine" or similar. But many are very very obviously current problems th…

> The direction is always the same "spend max a couple hours!"

Interestingly, I always took restrictions on time seriously. When I was told I should spend max 3 hours, I stopped latest at 3 hours, often earlier and discussed shortcommings of the solution based on spent time in the interview.

That strategy is easier when you are not that interested in that particular job though.

Re: The business of takehome assessments

#40

Post by shagie »

vundercind wrote: post #30
shagie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next question would be "how do you narrow from {250} down to {25} by spending at most 3 minutes per resume?" The answer there is often "select only the ones that show the most things on the resume without evaluation of their practical skills" ... and we get to the complaints then of "but people lie on their resumes all the time" and "but my skills at coding aren't things that I can reflect on the resume?" And whe…

That’s offloading nearly a quarter of a person-year of work onto the 250 candidates—potentially much more, if it’s more than a truly-two-hour assignment. To save yourselves a far smaller amount of work. And that’s for just one stage of the interview process! 249 will receive no benefit for their work. Nobody with options is gonna take that offer and you’ll be left with the desperate. It’s beyond rude, it’s a bad joke…

I am certainly not saying that it is time fair or that it doesn't result in a lot of excess work being done.

Take home assignments are there to minimize the amount of time spent per candidate with the most limited resource in the interview process - the people on a small team doing the interviews.

That is the problem that it is trying to solve.

Trying to minimize for the candidate time spent, increases the amount of the limited resource (the interviewers' time) and may mean that the interview process will be longer than is acceptable for candidates (are you willing to wait 4 weeks between the last interview and offer?) and removes the interviewers from revenue generating tasks.

There is no good solution to this. Often take home assignments are the least bad solution.

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