We’re a very small team with little experience in hiring but got approval for a new engineer. Basically HR will look for people through the usual channels and I think we have a reasonably good job description. Unfortunately the coding challenge (a 30h+ take home) is atrociously difficult and doesn’t really reflect what we do. On the other hand I think the false positive rate would be low. FWIW it’s a Linux application and it might be difficult to only count on experience from the CV.
Any ideas how to build a good challenge from scratch and what time constraints are reasonable?
In my experience, interview culture differs depending on the country. So, it would be better to provide some context around that.
I wouldn’t spend more than 2-3 hours on a take home challenge. I would politely decline such a requirement and move on to contact other employers even if the potential employer offers paying my 30h+ hour work week preparing for the interview. In my opinion, a “take home” should be a conversation starter so that you can ask questions and try to understand the candidate’s thinking. But, as I said, it may differ according to industry/country, etc.
Working culture is rather demanding and things tend to be quite ambigious, so to be honest the challenge reflects reality to some degree. But our team works with niche technology and therefore the pressure doesn’t fully apply to our small’ish team. (Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend the position to a not so experienced engineer or someone who doesn’t know how to limit their working hours.)
