Reply to: It technical tests

[v6g]

This is just getting crazy.

I am starting to invent and re-applied entry level questions for any job that come in. I am getting ratty with agents on the phone. If I hear the agent has no got a full job specification to hand, then I will wring their flipping necks, if I could.

Is this a public sector role? (if yes, politely decline)
Do you have a job spec?
What version of X, Y?
How are many interview stages?
Give the exact detail of each stage of the interview?
So there is an online test? How long is the test?
What are the office hours? ( you wouldn't believe it. One client wanted some one in 8am and staying to 6:30pm Monday to Friday and that client was not in London City or Canary Wharf. I lived 50 miles away from the site. There was no chance to WFH)

etc

These are the questions I want answered up front really well, otherwise I know it will be complete waste of time.

I'd add:

"Will I be required to work in close proximity with anyone who doesn't wash on a regular basis?"

For the original question, any technical test lasting longer that 30 mins, I ask for $500 cash in advance. Either that or I recommend that they hire the next guy. It seems to weed out the bozos.

[nomadd]

When you are on the market , do you do these tests..

No. Never.

[rocktronAMP]

just got a 2 hours online test for a new role, wrote back smth like "are you kidding me?"

This is just getting crazy.

I am starting to invent and re-applied entry level questions for any job that come in. I am getting ratty with agents on the phone. If I hear the agent has no got a full job specification to hand, then I will wring their flipping necks, if I could.

Is this a public sector role? (if yes, politely decline)
Do you have a job spec?
What version of X, Y?
How are many interview stages?
Give the exact detail of each stage of the interview?
So there is an online test? How long is the test?
What are the office hours? ( you wouldn't believe it. One client wanted some one in 8am and staying to 6:30pm Monday to Friday and that client was not in London City or Canary Wharf. I lived 50 miles away from the site. There was no chance to WFH)

etc

These are the questions I want answered up front really well, otherwise I know it will be complete waste of time.

[rocktronAMP]

I recently did one set of interviews for a large media / news company (name starts with S) - you may have guessed it!
They are absolute rubbish! The interview was two stages - one hour long telephone interview with online coding tests (where they will be able to see you code), and then followed on by a three hours face2face interview with coding tests and whiteboard sessions and guys looking over your shoulder and throwing in comments that each one of them would do it differently etc etc.
I found them trying to spread the word or advertising themselves as software company too (rather than just being seen as News company by the public in general).
The guys had a lot of attitude too The questions/coding excercises also were pathetic.

All in all - Pathetic! to be honest!

Soon, the very next day I had a brilliant offer from another company just straight after one phone interview.
Their interview just lasted for less than 30 minutes - where they wanted to hear what i did in the previous two projects and discussed some real scenarios they had and how how I would tackle them or deliver solution for that. That is all to it.
In few hours, by evening i bagged that gig

To be honest, you can clearly tell who are good folks and who are just not, just by seeing what they talk to you, and the kind of questions (are they real life scenarios that they want you to solves in interview?) etc rather than just running past some silly game-related questions like "S**" did

I think I know which company you mean. I had numerous agents calling about media company in Osterley, West London (luckily a commuting black spot for me). So thanks for confirming those near misses. I found that many companies touched my ThoughtWork idiots is infected with tech hipsters.

There is a big supermarket food chain in Welwyn Garden City, you spouts this digital agile transformation tulip and get what? I found out they want to do a 3 hour assessment as the next stage after the Codality test. Still they have decided whether the role is alive or not. This client doesn't look, sound or feel great, but those are the breaks in these desperate economic times. I wish there were different appreciative clients out there ...

[rocktronAMP]

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.

Shouldn't that be the backwards?

We, as contractual consultants, should be having direct telephone phone call 30 minutes with the client and then, if they want to technically test us, I see no problem obliging their request.

[rocktronAMP]

IKM assesments, do project X involving 4-5 technologies, do project Y involving facebook api and what not

The best was : 3 months gig, lowest rate possible, do us project Z (5h of work)

Recently, I finished three different Codality tests. I passed them all, but I needn't have bothered at all. The interview process is on hold for at least two roles and the third client has got back to me in the last week. At least, I know I passed it with 78% from Codality, because the score was immediately revealed as soon as I completed the final test.

I digress. I don't understand why any client insists on these stupid on-line tests for contractual roles. I can understand it for full-time employees, but to weed out numpties as consultant, I believe it is a pathetic waste of time and just proves that HR is lazy. (See the other forum thread on Chucking Contracting)

Having interviewed people on the other side on the rare occasion, I would prefer to get someone in the office and sit them down in a pair-programming test for 30-45 minutes. I'd get to know their culturally fit, personality and then I'd know they can code, and how they flipping think and solve problems.

These technical tests of mathematical problems really reflect the real world of engineering. But hey, how do you tell the clients they are wrong?

I feel your pain too...

[KentDogWalker]

just got a 2 hours online test for a new role, wrote back smth like "are you kidding me?"

[Graemsay]

I'm in Australia, and specialise in mobile development. It's pretty common for clients to request a programming test before an interview. Normally it takes the form of writing a simple app, and the client says that it should take no more than two to four hours.

Unfortunately the timescales are almost always unrealistic.

I was asked to do one this weekend, which involved building an sliding tile puzzle. This would require a custom UI component for the display, handling two or three classes of touch events in different ways, and animating the moving pieces.

I figured that this would take about a week.

I ran a Google search and found a Git repository from 2012 for a similar project. The check-in history confirmed my estimate.

https://github.com/thillerson/Tile-Puzzle-Android

Incidentally, Tony Hillerson was a director of engineering at Tack Mobile, and had around 13 years of development experience at that point. So he's not a clueless newbie...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thillerson

The only way that the project could have been done in the time specified would have been for me to fork Hillerson's project, rename the packages, and port it to the latest version of Android. That wouldn't tell the client anything about my coding skills.

I wrote a document outlining the above, and asked the agent to submit it to the client. Cue a very annoyed recruiter who said that she couldn't help me with that attitude.

I don't have a problem doing technical tests, even in my own time, provided that they don't take too long. What I dislike is companies asking me to spend hours or even days on a project before they even speak to me.

[Milkyway]

I recently did one set of interviews for a large media / news company (name starts with S) - you may have guessed it!
They are absolute rubbish! The interview was two stages - one hour long telephone interview with online coding tests (where they will be able to see you code), and then followed on by a three hours face2face interview with coding tests and whiteboard sessions and guys looking over your shoulder and throwing in comments that each one of them would do it differently etc etc.
I found them trying to spread the word or advertising themselves as software company too (rather than just being seen as News company by the public in general).
The guys had a lot of attitude too The questions/coding excercises also were pathetic.

All in all - Pathetic! to be honest!

Soon, the very next day I had a brilliant offer from another company just straight after one phone interview.
Their interview just lasted for less than 30 minutes - where they wanted to hear what i did in the previous two projects and discussed some real scenarios they had and how how I would tackle them or deliver solution for that. That is all to it.
In few hours, by evening i bagged that gig

To be honest, you can clearly tell who are good folks and who are just not, just by seeing what they talk to you, and the kind of questions (are they real life scenarios that they want you to solves in interview?) etc rather than just running past some silly game-related questions like "S**" did

[heyya99]

Yes, a solution to a coding task accompanying a CV is very common in development contracts these days. I did one for my current gig and am currently writing one for my prospective next one. They are time-consuming but if you give them the time they deserve then they are worth it. I suspect most candidates can't be bothered so your ahead of the queue right away. I don't like having to do them but I perform better in this capacity rather than solve a coding problem in a stressful interview situation.

[dx4100]

I don't mind doing remote tests in my own time at home. Did one for my current gig. Usual from the agent "won't take long". It was around four hours work to do it properly. Not sure how much the client looked at it or not.

I really don't get the point in them. If you can't tell a chancer from just talking to them about what they have done and looking at their CV then you shouldn't really be in charge of recruitment.

The worse is when you do them on a client site and the site looking over your shoulder questioning why you doing thing is x,y and z way. I often just leave and go do something more useful like have a coffee and put at bit of Jermery Kyle back on the TV.... Not really one for feathering someone's ego... and I am not going to enjoy working with that type of tulip

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.