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Discussion on: Unpopular opinion? I don't do puzzle coding tests.

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RichEdwards26

The online tests are naff but we needed something to filter candidates as we got burned, badly!
We interviewed a chap and he was great, we put him on site and he was horrific. He was declaring variables outside of the class and checking that (with build errors) into master - he broke the build 5 times in one day, and even didn't get the problem when confronted.
That was so embarrassing in front of the client.

So we introduced a tech test. It's in a real ide of their choice and it takes (in c#) 45 mins. And I get folks forget stuff under pressure so we give a steer early on, help with little code bits (as Google would) and we ask questions on design choices at the end. Those design choices reveal so much more than any theory.

This is the unpopular bit: because of this test We have caught the chancers - two folks claimed to be architects but we abandoned their tests after 10 mins.... Think : new project, first thing you do is get the packages or even create some folders or a class for anything... They were reading the menus. They wanted £85k salaries and clearly never used VS.

My point - I'm hands on technical and I recruit and I'm busy. I need something to remove the chancers from my process. Hands on is the only way to know for sure.