Politely refuse a lengthy test

[PhiltheGreek]

Make sure you can be lip-read from a distance too....

Ah Greenlake, Bravo. Yes, that's the way, a masterclass in dealing with proles, well done - a picture paints a thousand words when all's said and done.

[original PM]

This isn’t a test, it’s a free consultation.

Indeed and make sure you tell them exactly what you think of that.

Also name and shame the company - pretty sure their customers will be most interested in how much money they are (not) investing in their product.

[Hobosapien]

Post it here we can do it as a project between ourselves

Which we can deliberately ensure is not going to work, though it will appear to them like it will, so when the client goes live with it we have a backdoor into their system and can spam their customers with messages of how crap the client is.

[stek]

Which we can deliberately ensure is not going to work, though it will appear to them like it will, so when the client goes live with it we have a backdoor into their system and can spam their customers with messages of how crap the client is.

Like Bridget Fonda did in 'Single White Female' with the 'accoutng system' she developed for the fashion house - all on Mac System 7!

When they didn't pay for it all the numbers sharted falling off the screen which just goes to show, in Hollywood programmers spend 95% of delvelopmemnt time on fancy tumbling number effects and exotic bomb countdown screen that get blown up anyway, assuming the 5% to make the bomb actually explodes.

My favourite was in 'The Thirteenth Floor' - they had this prototype VR machine that was nowhere near ready to use and not to even try, but all the countdowns, voice instructions and swooping green laser effects worked. The time machine in 'Primer' was best, it was basically just a bag you got into....

[WTFH]

I have a friend who when he attended an interview was given a list of real bugs and a copy of the clients mobile app and told to see how many they could fix....

I had an interview years ago where it was going well, the client then said that they had a current issue and asked how I would fix it. I got them to put the issue up on a whiteboard. First thing I spotted was the cause of the issue - the solution had been designed by a Big 5 consultant who had read the manual. The manual was written based on beta code which had errors in it and it would never work if you configured it that way. Anyone who had spent time configuring that piece of the software was aware of the problem, but the Big 5 only rely on books, not practical experience.
I politely explained that to the client, then went on to draw on the whiteboard how I would fix the issue.

They weren't videoing my talk on how to fix it and I didn't repeat myself, nor did they have time to take substantive notes. At the end, I said "and that's the basis of how I would fix it", then wiped the whiteboard clean.

[woohoo]

Just explain to them it would take 3 days to do and you are happy to do it for your usual day rate.

I never take tests directly from the Agency, often it's just a way for them to get you to invest time with them. It's hard not to give references, rates etc when you have invested a morning or day doing a test for them.

[unixman]

It involves developing a batch and real time data ingestion platform in Google Cloud using technologies like Kafka, Flume, Spark and Hadoop and serve it using an API that queries an Elastic Search Index. In addition to this a 4-5 page Power point presentation showing architectural diagram and discussion.

Glad to hear you're not doing the "test", OP. You do us all a favour.

Outrageous.

[greypanda]

Thanks everyone. I have let the agency know that I won't be doing this test. I also mentioned the reason.
Initially I was a little worried that they may think I am refusing it because of lack of my technical skills but I don't care now.

[ladymuck]

Thanks everyone. I have let the agency know that I won't be doing this test. I also mentioned the reason.
Initially I was a little worried that they may think I am refusing it because of lack of my technical skills but I don't care now.

They'll probably try and spin it that way. Anyone who knows their stuff can conduct a technical interview and spot the fakers. Tests are usually a replacement for competence.

[Dark Black]

Well done for sticking to your guns on this.

There's a client local to me that always asks for a mini-project as a test before they'll even consider an interview. I've always refused, it's probably 4-5 days work including testing.

I told the agency it was incredibly insulting to ask for that sort test given the amount of experience I've got and was the sort of think I might expect for a permie role (although even then I still wouldn't do it).

To be fair to them they apologised and said other candidates had the same opinion but apparently the end client's HR department () does this for permies and contractors alike.