Why oh why do recruitment agancies insist on stupid tests?

[CKnig]

oh really? Never read any "Santa" story in english - in german they are actually called "Donner" and "Blitz" just as the weather phenomenon also see here: Myth funny to see that this side got the "Blitzen" VS. "Blitz" wrong to ... even funnier I mistook "lightning" with "flash"

modified on Thursday, December 18, 2008 10:22 AM

[DaveAce15]

To be honest, I've been on both ends of the stick...being hired as a developer and managing hiring of developers. Trust me, "simple" coding tests or exercises (usually no more than 30 min.) can tell you fathoms on a persons ability to code, problem solve and even their work ethics. If you say you've worked with SQL, vb.net, C#, html (yea, dating mayself), etc...I assume you can create a simple select statement, a simple loop and other minor problem solving items...by hand! This came from meeting to many "experts" using wysiwyg/scripting tools, their "personality" or "friends" to develop. I'll admit, the tools are time savers but when the sh%t hits the fan, I need a person who can lift the hood up and get his/her elbows dirty, problem solve and get the job done. When it came to tests, I usually ignore the minor syntactical errors as, trust me, you can see right off the bat who knows what they are doing and those who don't. My classic case in a preliminary interview with a candidate and I drop the "quick" test on his lap. 15 min. later, he comes out saying he's done (and me thinking...sweet, some one who knows something) only to see blank sheets! I go, do you need any clarification on the questions? and...wait...wait... "...this test is too easy, I'd just google the info..." Hmmmm...OK...thank you I'll caveat though, I've had tests where they drop theory on your lap, directly from the Microsoft manuals. I know how to code and problem solve but drop theory on my lap (7 questions, each full page) and my eyes glaze over. I had to deal with that in university and got through that. I was not going for my Masters (or certification) in the interview. That did frustrate me (even though I did complete it and got a good grade :oP ) "Simple" tests work and I feel are a necessary evil to weed out the pretenders to get to the guys and gals who can do the job... 2 cents Dave

[Dan Neely]

CKnig wrote:

also see here: Myth

... learn something new everyday. :cool: Does this mean I can go home from work now? :laugh:

Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

[halciber]

I've had a number of those tests like you've described. What was infuriating was that it wasn't a test on good coding practices. I couldn't stop thinking "This question is moot, because I would never code something like this!" It was more like a trick test. When I've had verbal programming tests, or tests based on code that was actually used I've done fine. I'm planning on writing & then studying code snigglets that can be found on these exams prior to my next job search. I can definitely appreciate your anger.

Mike Goldweber

[Miszou]

Here's a batch file bubble sort[^]. :cool:

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[Henry Minute]

halciber wrote:

studying code snigglets

Do you mean these[^] or snippets?

Honi soit qui mal y pongs - Evil to he who thinks it stinks

[Dan Neely]

You need to set a license on that :P

Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

[halciber]

I meant snippets. Snigglets means the same thing, ie somethin small. It was a word that was popular in the early '80s.

Mike Goldweber

[Ryan Speakman]

Even worse (IMO): 15 years progressive, full-time experience developing Web applications across a broad range of industries, and I recently had a recruiter (who sounded like he was about half my age) ask me the "M&M's" question... You know, "If the assignment was to manufacture M&M candies, how would you go about doing this?" WAS HE JOKING??? I remember being warned about this question way back in grad school (I also have an MBA), but that was so long ago I couldn't remember any of the fun "trick" answers, of course... Like a complete idiot, I actually tried to come up with some kind of an answer for this kid, but he kept going with follow-up questions on this topic for about 15 minutes until I'd finally had enough. I passed on the job (which was for .NET development, not making candy... go figure)...

[Yortw]

I don't know how it is oversea's, but until our (recent) change of government that was pretty difficult to do... we pretty much had legislation that made trial period contracts either illegal/void, or that just made it way too difficult to terminate someone anyway. Stupid, I know, but that's the sort of thing our left wing Labour governments do. We recently got a National government again and they've just passed legislation to make 3 month contracts doable again... the problem with this is that when you hire any developer, even a good one, to work on systems the size of the ones we work on, and learn all our tools and methods etc. 3 moths usually still isn't enough to tell if they're really any good... although you should've figured out if they can code by then.

[Lost User]

Father Christmas wrote:

Au contraire - the people that are good enough to get to work somewhere where they are treated like people and not cattle will avoid you like the plague and you will end up with a team of geeks who canpass tests but are probably crap when it comes to thinking outside the oblong

Thankfully the reality here is far from what you describe.

[Lost User]

Rob Caldecott wrote:

Recruitment agencies don't help as I'm sure they encourage people to apply for jobs they are not fully-qualified for

True - and again if you read my original post (and the subject) I was talking about a test set BY THE AGENCY - and we're note talking a trivial 'write a function to sort an array' but an OO Application to perform weighted searching of web pages.

Rob Caldecott wrote:

If I interview you and it turns out you are not suitable then not only is it a waste of everyone's time and my company's money, it makes me look stupid

So you hire everyone you interview? Maybe you are stupid :)

Rob Caldecott wrote:

I know companies who have spent a long time and a lot of cash cleaning up after a sh***y programmer who churned out crap before anyone noticed what was happening.

These are bad companies who are obviously not doing code reviews - getting around the fact that our internal processes are poor by setting programming tests at interview?

Rob Caldecott wrote:

could tell you some stories about people I've interviewed with CVs that are littered with first class qualifications and claims of industrial-strength C++ experience, but when push comes to shove they just cannot cut the mustard - thanks to a combination of language, logic and coding tests.

So you don't actualy know they couldn't cut the proverbial mustard - just that they couldn't do the tests? And yes, sure, I'm playing devil's advocate a little here - it IS possible to include sensible tests at interview - someone pointed here http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html[^] an his coding tests (and more importantly the way he handles the process) would be fine.

If I knew then what I know today, then I'd know the same now as I did then - then what would be the point? .\\axxx (That's an 'M')

[Lost User]

I had one of them sprung on my after two interviews. Lots of multiple choice questions with very black/white answers which, in the real world, I would need to ask for more information on. Stupid questions like "You're at a party where you don't know anyone except the host. Do You a) Just walk up to people and introduce yourself, b) Hand around the host and wait to be introduced, c) Stay as long as is polite then leave quietly without speaking to many people at all. No d) get outrageously drunk and drop your daks! Whose party is it (close friend, work colleague, prime minister? What sort o party?> fancy dress? Street? Bondage? I was really p*ssed off at being told the test should take between 30 and 60 minutes - this is after about 2 hours of interviews remember, with no warning prior, so I sat down and randomly checked the answers through the 30 or so questions. Apparently I got one of the best social aptitude results they'd ever had! Shows what a waste of space that one was, because it must be obvious what a misanthropic bastard I really am!

If I knew then what I know today, then I'd know the same now as I did then - then what would be the point? .\\axxx (That's an 'M')

[Lost User]

yeah I once had the "How would you go about finding the weight of a 747-400?" So I said I would phone Boeing. "Oh, no, you can't do that!" "Why not?" "No - that's not the answer I'm looking for!" "But that's what I'd do. You want to know the weight, I'd ask Boeing - easy - will take me a few minutes I guess." "NO, I want you to think about the process - how you could break down the task!" "Oh, OK - well, I'd look up Boeing in the phone book, .." "NO! you can't phone Boeing! You have to weight it yourself!" this went on for some time - eventually (I got the job) I discovered he'd been asked this at interview once, and had described how he would calculate the thrust of the engines, the lift offered by the wings at cruising velocity etc. and calculate the plan's mass from that. He was never sure if that was what the interviewer was looking for, and has asked it at every interview since, even though he had no real idea why! I'd never heard of the M&M question before - what are you supposed to say - use the M&M factory? Go to the Nestle factory where they make smarties and borrow their facility? Hire some cheap labour to individually carve chocolate into shape then paint with icing?

If I knew then what I know today, then I'd know the same now as I did then - then what would be the point? .\\axxx (That's an 'M')

[Cameron Vetter]

I know the reason I give these tests is because 90% of the people applying can't answer the simplest programming problem, regardless of experience on their resume, or how well they can talk development.

[Cameron Vetter]

That is a funny story, from what I've heard the correct answer to this question is that you would call boeing, or look it up on their web site, or something simple, not over engineer a solution... Hearing that he was looking for the wrong answer is a great story.

[T Mac Oz]

danialgibson wrote:

Because they don't know how to tell a good developer from a bad developer. If you take their test and fail then you're bad (which is not correct but is they way they'd see it).

That's not all there is to it, see below:

danialgibson wrote:

If you want to work at this company then you'd probably be ok taking the test, however meaningless it is. If you don't really care for the company then don't apply for the position (and thus the test actually did serve a purpose). Quote Selected Text

Absolutely :-D We always ask for sample code from prospective developers, nothing demanding.* There are several objectives behind it: 1) Establish whether the applicant can actually write code/analyse & solve a problem (I've encountered many people with impressive-looking CV's who can't). 2) Give us a glimpse of their thought processes (you'd be surprised how creative some people can be on the simplest of tasks, some make mountains out of molehills, some have surprised & impressed with how simply & elegantly they solve an already simple task). 3) Determine the applicant's level of motivation/enthusiasm (we want motivated people who take an interest in what we do, if they're not motivated enough to perform a very simple task to get the job, they're not likely to be motivated to put much into their work). 4) Eliminate anyone who can't follow simple instructions (the vast majority of applicants simply see a job ad & automatically send off their CV without taking the time to consider where they're applying to or what they'll be doing if they actually get the job - we don't want to hire mindless automatons, or waste our time interviewing them). * For a task where the typical solution was less than 40 lines of code (including declarations & comments), we had one response with "... Given that this task will require a fair amount of work ... assuming that I meet or exceed your criteria ...". My response to that was: If you think this task requires a "fair amount of work", I can guarantee that you do not meet, let alone exceed, our criteria.

T-Mac-Oz "When I'm ruler of the universe ... I'm working on it, I'm working on it. I'm just as frustrated as you are. It turns out to be a non-trivial problem." - Linus Torvalds

[T Mac Oz]

Kevin McFarlane wrote:

But I detest having tech tests delivered via the agency rather than at the employer.

Fair enough too. We ask for code samples but wouldn't dream of having a recruitment agency evaluate them. There's enough "programmers" out there who can't write code, I can't imagine why anyone would think a recruitment agent would have the ability to distinguish good code from bad.

T-Mac-Oz "When I'm ruler of the universe ... I'm working on it, I'm working on it. I'm just as frustrated as you are. It turns out to be a non-trivial problem." - Linus Torvalds

[T Mac Oz]

Father Christmas wrote:

if I am stupid enough to accept the position when I can't do the job, then O will be sacked - an inconvenience to you, but a potential disaster for an employee.

An employee taking on a job they know quite well they are under-qualified for, gets a minimum of about 6 weeks income at a level they have not earned and also likely plenty of warning/clues that it's not going to last (yes, employment contracts with a probationary period still include minimum termination notice clauses). Unless the employee ruins their own reputation by touting what they've gotten away with, where's the disaster? On the other hand, an employer defrauded in this manner has already made a massive investment: the time taken by business management & the development team (HR goes without saying, but costs more if - e.g. in small business - HR is an auxiliary function of management): 1) To evaluate CVs 2) Interviews 3) Post Interview analysis 4) as many iterations of 2) & 3) as necessary to select the best candidate(s) 5) Induction 6) Ramp-up training 7) The wages of the unacceptable employee over the probationary period. For the right employee(s), it's a good investment. For the wrong one(s), that's a disaster. The original investment is lost and the whole cycle begins again with all the same risks and expenses (sure there are CV's still on file from round 1 but someone who is still on the market 3 months later - typical probation - is likely not a good choice either). In addition, while the advertised role remains unfilled, the development team is understaffed, resulting in overtime costs &/or project overrun. Sure there can be other reasons for a hire not working out, but an employer that doesn't take every possible step to ensure that the candidate(s) it hires can perform the work as expected is a huge risk-taker and an employer I would bet on going out of business sooner or later.

T-Mac-Oz "When I'm ruler of the universe ... I'm working on it, I'm working on it. I'm just as frustrated as you are. It turns out to be a non-trivial problem." - Linus Torvalds

[Lost User]

Seriously 90% - so out of 10 applications for a developer role you get only one who can actually program? OK - you live in a different world to me!

If I knew then what I know today, then I'd know the same now as I did then - then what would be the point? .\\axxx (That's an 'M')