[quote=an][quote=Coronita]Those that had a problem with the take home assignment usually didnt want to do it because they werent qualified, becauses alternatively we offered an in person interview that just asked tech questions, and they didnt do very well there too.[/quote]
I hate take home. If you give me in person tech questions, I’d take that any day. If you don’t give me that option, then I would have turn down that opportunity. I’ve been fortunate to never have to do a take home. Luckily, a huge chunk of my career has been people who have worked with me in the past pulling me in, so I don’t have to interview. I hate interview, just like I hate taking tests at school.[/quote]
I had to do take home a few times. I prefer that than the in person whiteboarding interviews. But we do offer both, and let the candidate pick 9/10 of the candidate takes the take home. The take home takes about 2 hours, that’s about it.
We don’t grill our candidates. Part of the team panel is also to see how they get along with the other engineers in a work setting. So even if someone doesn’t know how to do something, my engineers help guide the candidate through the question, they kinda brainstorm together in the project on different things. Some engineers jump in and write some of the code to show how to do something.
But yeah, I got a lot of flak from senior management about potential good candidates turning down the takehome interview and not being interested.
I think with most of the younger engineers, they seem to prefer the take home and working with my engineers through the interview. The feedback I got was, it was a lot less stressful and didn’t feel like it was an interview. They also like seeing some diversity on the team. My lead IOS engineer is 26-7, has been writing code since he was in high school from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Really smart kid. He’s working on his part time MBA from UCSD also. He complains that the younger “kids” these days code way too fast and he’s having a hard time keeping up with them, lol. I agree. One of my new hires is a fresh college grad and a really quick learner. She started out in a JC and then transferred to 4 year school with a top rank CS dept. She did an internship in Vietnam with a company doing IOS apps, and her take home assignment was way better than a lot of seasoned engineers.
I think the main thing is regardless of which style is your interview, just dont be an asshole interviewer. we’ve all experienced them at some point.
