Reply to: Politely refuse a lengthy test

[SlipTheJab]

HR is another pseudo science, like "womens studies" and other such nonsense, full of lots of fake nonsense backed up by papers that nobody but the same closed group read.

There are some interesting talks by clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson on youtube, who has done some proper scientific analysis of what makes the best hires, and he clearly lays out that most of the hiring techniques in use in the UK IT industry have no statistical basis in predicting which hires will perform best in the role. Most of HR is similar.

Its about time the whole nonsense of HR was laid bare.

Certainly when I have been the hiring manager the corresponding HR depts both large and small have been counter productive influences, and mostly routinely worked around by those actually delivering success for the organisation.

Are you Phil Neville in disguise?

[Platypus]

Its about time the whole nonsense of HR was laid bare.

Tah! Next you'll be telling me that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes!

[MyUserName]

An agency has sent me a lengthy test to complete before their client can consider me for a telephone interview. Now this test is extremely long it's actually a project. It would take me at least 3 days to complete. I can't be bothered as my brain is already dehydrated as I am working MON-FRI. How should I politely refuse it? I am experiencing such a long-winded test for the first time in my 6 years contracting career.

I got given a test for a perm job about 10 years ago. It was to write a program which takes in a number of chess pieces and then outputs all of the board permuations possible where they cannot capture each other. I was not allowed to use any language on my cv.

I phoned the agent and told him I would not be proceeding with the application. He didn't even argue.

[JIDEARE]

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

This made me piss. Prince Phillip's political incorrectness is always a highlight

[CoolCat]

HR is another pseudo science, like "womens studies" and other such nonsense, full of lots of fake nonsense backed up by papers that nobody but the same closed group read.

There are some interesting talks by clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson on youtube, who has done some proper scientific analysis of what makes the best hires, and he clearly lays out that most of the hiring techniques in use in the UK IT industry have no statistical basis in predicting which hires will perform best in the role. Most of HR is similar.

Its about time the whole nonsense of HR was laid bare.

Certainly when I have been the hiring manager the corresponding HR depts both large and small have been counter productive influences, and mostly routinely worked around by those actually delivering success for the organisation.

[HugeWhale]

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.

Says a lot.
I've managed projects with HR departments in the past (a couple of ERP implementations, shared service set-ups) and I can tell you unequivocally that people who work in HR are invariably second rate.
The brightest and the best, on leaving the top universities and business schools, do not think "I'll go and work in HR".

HR though has great career prospects. There are lots of 1:1 relationships: HR director -> Senior HR manager -> HR manager -> HR support: so promotion is easy, especially as it's still a female-dominated profession and hence lots of maternity opportunities present themselves. And they don't have to do a lot - just talk some BS about 'talent management strategies' 'competence frameworks' 'reward and recognition strategies' (always popular with other Board members) and you're there.

[TheFaQQer]

Now this test is extremely long it's actually a project. It would take me at least 3 days to complete. I can't be bothered as my brain is already dehydrated as I am working MON-FRI. How should I politely refuse it?

"I estimate that developing this would take approximately three days. I'm happy to complete the work, and I'll knock the last three days off the end of the contract, subject to completing the six months that we've been discussing. So, I'll invoice now for those days, at the rate that we've been talking about, and then they can have a rebate in six months time"

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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....

[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.