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rv02
4y

Startup: We are looking for interns. Do this project that we know will take you a week. But your chances mostly depend on this project.

Me looking for my first internship: Takes complete 2 days to submit the project which had so many open-ended questions. They review and say I aced the project and would like to interview.

Interviewer 1: From the beginning starts asking me if I myself have done this or that, gets thrown some questions that I answer immediately and then suddenly get accused that I must have copied from a tutorial on an open-ended question. I used what I learned from my previous projects, what do you want from me. You never specified all the cases. Then he said is done.

Interviewer 2: Hello, we are a new startup. We will make you work 40 hours a week. Then he lied. Are you allowed to lie?? He said we are unpaid (I read it wasn't) to ask what motivates me. The other interviewer on being asked did say that it wasn't unpaid. By this point, I was done.

Got rejected today. Wasted almost 3 days on their stupid project. I am so salty!!!

rant

internship

job interview
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  • 1
    4y
    Probably someone did a better job.
    2 days for interview project is not a lot. But personally, I give something taking 4-5H for intern position, 1 to 2 days for junior and a week project for senior.
    But if 5 people did the project, we could choose only 1. So yes, 4 people will be frustrated. But I do not see a better way.
    Our last front-end recruitment (Junior position).
    1000 Resumes checked and contacted on Linkedin
    120 candidates answered.
    30 were sent the exercise.
    Only 3 completed.
    Only 1 completed it “reasonably well”.
  • 12
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript you must live on another planet to me. I'm lead architect and I have recruited devs and been in many many interviews as an interviewee.

    If I'm asked to do a home project for an hour or two then ok - but only because I do better without pressure of people watching me. I wouldn't spend more than 3 hours on one let alone a week. And I would never ask a candidate to do so since it's completely unreasonable. There's loads of jobs out there so why should a candidate waste a day on an application to us which is a day they lost working on other applications? It will scare off candidates that might be extremely competent but aren't willing to waste time on a process that by numbers has a good chance of not paying out for them.

    We aren't Google and we can't act like it.

    1 week project for a senior role? Mental.
  • 0
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript looking at your number of applications I guess you are google
  • 0
    4y
    @craig939393 No. A small company of 12 (14 now) total employes.

    Why would we want to hire someone who doesn't want to put time in ?

    If it's "too long", then they are not really interested in our position, they are intested in "a job which pays money".

    We decided we do not weant these developpers.

    Easy as that.
  • 4
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript a company of 12 gets 120 applications? In my country a lot of people get hired just because there is no other application (which I do disagree with - rather hire no one than someone that can't contribute at a reasonable level).
  • 0
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript I get that someone might have done better. But in my case it would have taken more time to make it better. Like I said I did in 2 days but they gave a "1 week" project. They should have rather spent more time themselves on their question to make it challenging and judge me there. Also these internships pay monthly what I spend in less than a week so obviously not for their stupid money.
  • 0
    4y
    @craig939393 Ever used smartly LinkedIn navigator ? ;p Our CEO spent 3 full days to contact these 1000 leads.
  • 0
    4y
    @craig939393

    And just, the project for this junior position was very simple :
    We provide full design (Done with modules in Figma)
    Their job was to implement it using any component based framework. (React, vue etc, doesn’t matter, we were checking how well person can split page in components and implement them).
    It’s a full page of our app, already existing (So people don’t think we reuse their work in any way).
    It took 3 days to the person we hired.
    Between 1 and 4 days to 2 others.
  • 1
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript I haven't. Thanks for the tip! If I get 120 applications you will blow my mind.
  • 0
    4y
    @rv02

    Did they provide « scoring system » ? like what part of your work is acvtually evaluated ?
    Example : I don;’t care if front end developer doesn’t know how to calculate weighted average. It will be done by back end dev.
    But I need this person to know how flex works and how to split a provided design into separate components.
  • 0
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript Yes, they divided the whole project into 3 levels. The last level said "implement exception handling" which I obviously did on a few cases I can think of.
    Also their judging criteria was my database choice, schema design. So they rejected me on something that wasn't even their mentioned criteria.
  • 5
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript Are you for real? 1 week to complete your test for a senior role? That's mental mate. Nobody worth their weight in gold would put that much time in a test, certainly not me.

    I don't get the obsession with giving applicants test to complete that takes days. I believe there are better ways to evaluate a candidate's abilities.
  • 0
    4y
    @AjDevNull

    Well, it’s the best one we found.

    If you have suggestions, I’ll take them happily!

    Questions based? We tried it, not working. (But to be fair, it’s a very fast method to remove “unwanted” candidates. For example in our back end test, first question is what this will print : DateTime d; Console.WriteLine(d==null ? “Null” : d.ToString()).

    Well apparently, even copy paste it into editor is too much for half people applying for a senior (Yes it was a first question for senior position). 75% (!!!!!) of applicants got that wrong. Common, it’s value type vs reference type…. And we provided FULL program you can just copy paste and test…. Just to show the level of developpers pretending to be seniors.

    For front end, I’m literally at lose. Beside ask them to implement a page (Which take between 1 and 4 days), I have no idea. Asking them a purely CSS questions ? No use.
  • 3
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript

    A week? You want a week of someone's time for an interview?

    LOL

    W

    T

    F
  • 3
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript Perhapps try or take inspiration from https://gist.github.com/getify/...

    It's mental how one could ask and expect potential hires to spend a whole week (let alone more than 2 days) on some test that may end up being a complete waste of their time (especially if that means less money and doing "outsourced" work for free).
  • 1
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript "Why would we want to hire someone who doesn't put time in" => "Why would I apply for a company that doesn't trust my record and my word and an informal test on-site?"

    I always do shit at tests because I lack motivation cuz it's not for real, just like I sucked in uni for theory but at work I am a disciplined dev. The job is usually less glamourous than what it is portrayed as by the interviewer.

    If anything test requirements should decrease with seniority, as those candidates probably have visibly earned their marks in other ways
  • 0
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript
    3 day of CEO time to go over 1000 applicants!?
    Is that approach even cost effective? sustainable?

    The home assigment approach is OK, I guess - but that is probably the reason you have to go through so many applicants. You are looking for a unicorn - a compentent dev, that has lots of free time, and has the required mentality to jump through your hoops.

    My approach is much simpler. I ask a few questions to remove the idiots. Then give an open ended assigment that require 1-2 hourd to complete. The format is similar to a work Ticket. they then submit the code, and a short written report of what they did, why, and how.

    Thats it.
  • 0
    4y
    @NoToJavaScript
    You should consider investing in training your jr devs, instead of looking for the unicorns.
    I know. It is Hard to do in a small startup - but we all do it anyway. Look for the ones that have the ability to learn and adapt quickly. Avoid the "thats the only way to do it" types. Try and find the creative ones. If you made a mistake - don't waste time, and send the jr to look for his next job.

    Hireing Seniors is a big problem with this approach. But - if your jr can learn quickly => they will graduate to senior in a very short time (1-2 years).
  • 0
    4y
    These day I started an interview and before talk with someone from the company, they sent to me a test, make an android project, get data from api, do cache, this things. They gave me 5 days to do it, I think it was a good time, but I didn't have time to do it, and I still test some libraries that I've never used 😅 so, in the end I made the requested points, implement x, y, z and if possible a, b and c.
    I think that it is a good way to test someone. But people like me, with a job, things to study, and things to do, it's a hard work to manage the time
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