It technical tests

[LondonManc]

I've had the odd place here and there want to do small technical tests but my roles tend to be half technical/half analytical and it does vary considerably. It also depends how busy the interviewers are in terms of what they've had time to prep.

[diseasex]

I've just completed one for a company in the North West. It was front and backend. Needed to show AngularJs, WebApi, Social Media integration, database. Took me about 10 hours but wasn't really sure how long to spend on it and felt I left it half finished. Also got 15 random general questions in a word document which 99% people would just Google, I know I did

Was this one in leeds? i couldnt be bothered to do this one. too long and crap rate

[Jaws]

I've done one of these before spent about 2 hours. Would only do it again if it was a follow up to a phone interview with the client. I just don't completely believe that the agent would always pass them on to the client.

[Frames84]

Was this one in leeds? i couldnt be bothered to do this one. too long and crap rate

Bury

[Frames84]

I've done them part of an interview before, pair programming or having to do a kata infront of people generally design agencies I found, these are only for half an hour which I'm fine with.

[mdw]

I've done 2-3 of these lately, the agents always make out 'shouldnt take you long', how would they know? They have no idea what is being asked for.

The trouble is you could write what they're asking for so many different ways, the trick is having ESP and guessing from the job spec which way they are after.

I only did them as the market was dead in Feb, otherwise I just refuse them.

[WTFH]

I've done 2-3 of these lately, the agents always make out 'shouldnt take you long', how would they know? They have no idea what is being asked for.

They may not know what the questions mean or how to answer them, but the person/company who designed and set the test will know.

[KentDogWalker]

In Cambridge interviewing for a perm job years ago. Written test, question asks me to write a unix shell script to do something, emphasizing "just a quick script". I wrote it no prob. Chap comes back into the room. He looks at the script, says fine. But he also says "you haven't validity checked these arguments" or similar. I smiled and agreed, but I felt like saying "Obviously not FFS. It's an 10 line script to run once, as requested".

Did you get the job?

[KentDogWalker]

I've only had interview questions for contracts. This last gig (8month , 4 to go) I've been at was just a 1 hr phone call and its been brill.

[VectraMan]

I had one for a permie job last year. There was one of those online 30-minute tests, which was quite enjoyable actually and a couple of programming challenges, one of which was easy and the other one turned out to be more challenging than I'd expected and ended up being a bit of a rush to complete it in the couple of evenings I'd allowed.

For what turned out to be my longest contract they hardly asked me anything. The guy interviewing me hadn't done any programming for years but obviously I sounded like I knew what I was talking about so he gave me the job.