The cover image for this post is by Glenn Carstens-Peters
Introduction
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, developers face a competitive job market where they must prove their skills and expertise to potential employers. One popular method used by companies for assessing candidates is the take-home tech test. These tests are designed to evaluate a developer’s problem-solving abilities, understanding of algorithms, and overall coding prowess outside of the traditional interview setting. However, are these tests truly useful and relevant in today’s job market?
Where Take-Home Tech Tests Work
For junior developers or individuals with limited experience, take-home tech tests can be a great way to separate the best candidates from the rest. They provide an opportunity for companies to gauge a candidate’s understanding of fundamental concepts related to their specific business area.
However, as one progresses in their career and gains more experience, these tests become less valuable, as their skills should be evident through public portfolios or demonstrated work experience.
It should be noted that take-home tech tests are only valuable if the following are true:
- It represents, in whole or in part, the particular that business or it’s clients work in
- The submitted code will go through a code review during a follow-up interview
Take-home tech tests which take the format of, “log into LeetCode and complete the following challenges,” are largely useless to all developers, regardless of their experience level.
When Take-Home Tech Tests Don’t Work
One significant concern with take-home tech tests is their exclusionary nature. These tests often require a considerable time investment that many candidates may not have due to personal responsibilities outside of their professional lives. This can disproportionately impact underrepresented groups, who may be more likely to have family caregiving duties or lack the ability to devote ample time to these assessments.
Moreover, companies often use take-home tech tests as a filtering mechanism to weed out candidates before reviewing their portfolios or considering other factors such as cultural fit. In many cases, a candidate’s submitted response will be ignored in favour of those who have completed the test. This can lead to a loss of exceptional talent and valuable diversity within organisations.
Our CTO and Microsoft MVP, Jamie Taylor, has this to say on the potential for exclusion when using take-home tech tests:
💬 Jamie Taylor:
[Take-home tech tests are] also incredibly exclusionary. There’s a distinct possibility that you could find the perfect candidate, but they have no time to take a tech test due to personal bandwidth sinks - especially those outside of work like looking after family members. You’re cutting out people who look after vulnerable people: kids, parents, siblings, and those who might not have the ability to take a tech test.
You also need to remember that anything that can be understood by one person, can be understood by another if taught in the correct way. The point I’m getting at is that tech tests just prove knowledge, which anyone can learn; they don’t provide any information on culture fit or willingness to learn. Both of which are more important than knowledge.
Take-Home Tech Tests For Experts?
Despite these concerns, some developers, like Sydney Polk, Senior Software Engineer at Indeed.com, are opting out of take-home tech tests altogether. They argue that if an employer does not trust their skills based on their experience and public portfolio, it may not be the right fit for them:
💬 Syndey Polk:
I’ve made a decision.
I am 60 years old. I am not going to do coding exercises or take home assignments for interviews anymore. If you don’t believe me when I tell you I can code when I have 37 years of coding plus a comp sci degree from a good school, then don’t waste your time with me.
I really like my job. It’s not perfect, but it’s really good. If you think I would be good for you, talk to me. Hire me. And if I suck, fire me. Otherwise, you act like you have a bunch of candidates. I am sure one of them can do your leet-code puzzles well enough to please you.
I have no incentive to be a dog or pony anymore. Good luck with your search.
— Source: LinkedIn
We intentionally don’t use take-home tech tests when interviewing candidates at any level. Something that Jamie (our CTO) was very intentional about when drafting our interviewing and hiring processes:
💬 Jamie Taylor:
For junior developers or people without much experience, it can be a great way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
But those tests need to be related to your business area. If you have someone writing an algorithm for sorting t-shirts by size, reversing a string, or calculating palindromes (all common tech test tasks), but your company uses CMSs to build websites, they you’re waiting their time.
But for anyone who is mid-level to senior, or with a very public portfolio on GitHub (or similar), or any kind of free content like YouTube videos, they’re a waste of time. They either have people who can vouch for them, or content out there which speaks for them.
— Source: LinkedIn
In Conclusion
In conclusion, while take-home tech tests can be beneficial for assessing junior developers’ fundamental skills and knowledge in specific areas, they may become less relevant and even exclusionary for mid-level to senior candidates or those with a public portfolio.
To create a more inclusive and equitable job market, companies should consider alternative methods of evaluating candidate suitability while minimising the potential biases associated with take-home tech tests.
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