I encourage candidates submitting something like this ask the hiring manager what will the process be. Questions like:
- Will feedback be provided on the submitted application?
- What does that feedback look like, are you spending 60 minutes asking about my implementation choices or will you also spend time offering feedback on how I could have improved my solution?
For any hiring managers by providing feedback to candidates you are showing that candidates will grow and develop on your team. By not providing feedback you risk ending up like Roam Research and loosing out on many potential applicants because you demonstrate that you aren't interested in developing your staff.
More than that, I would ask what their acceptance criteria are. I’ve taken a test like this only to get feedback that felt like a giant “got you!” from the hiring manager. There’s so much that goes into coding one of these up, and there’s a limit to how much effort a candidate is willing to put into free work, so this felt kind of bad. This was for Thomson-Reuters on their Clojurescript team.
I just wrote a post about a quite similar experience. I feel like if a candidate takes a few hours to complete a test the feedback could be a slightly more involved process but from the hiring side it doesn't really scale.
Yeah this really captures what I experienced too. There’s zero back and forth which is how you would actually work with someone. I think that’s what bothered me most — it was an unrealistic situation for how people work together, and there was no chance to defend my decisions or feel out what the actual acceptance criteria were.
Comments
I encourage candidates submitting something like this ask the hiring manager what will the process be. Questions like:
- Will feedback be provided on the submitted application?
- What does that feedback look like, are you spending 60 minutes asking about my implementation choices or will you also spend time offering feedback on how I could have improved my solution?
For any hiring managers by providing feedback to candidates you are showing that candidates will grow and develop on your team. By not providing feedback you risk ending up like Roam Research and loosing out on many potential applicants because you demonstrate that you aren't interested in developing your staff.
More than that, I would ask what their acceptance criteria are. I’ve taken a test like this only to get feedback that felt like a giant “got you!” from the hiring manager. There’s so much that goes into coding one of these up, and there’s a limit to how much effort a candidate is willing to put into free work, so this felt kind of bad. This was for Thomson-Reuters on their Clojurescript team.
I just wrote a post about a quite similar experience. I feel like if a candidate takes a few hours to complete a test the feedback could be a slightly more involved process but from the hiring side it doesn't really scale.
https://d22qefpbdavdoz.cloudfront.net/#interviewing-and-fail...
Yeah this really captures what I experienced too. There’s zero back and forth which is how you would actually work with someone. I think that’s what bothered me most — it was an unrealistic situation for how people work together, and there was no chance to defend my decisions or feel out what the actual acceptance criteria were.