Why are take-home assessments such a god damn waste of my fucking time, either interview me and tell me I have the fucking job or don't. You're not fucking google so don't make me jump through a bunch of hoops for nothing.

When I was younger, I applied for a frontend position at a company (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and so on). I was given a "take-home assessment", didn't think much of it and accepted. Got home and started looking at what needed to be done, only to realize they wanted me to do the assessment in... Fucking Java. This was NOT mentioned in the job listing. Like, at all.

I freaked the fuck out and called them, asked if they gave me the wrong assignment, the answer was "No, HR wants everyone to do this assignment when applying for any position".

I lol'd and ghosted them, like they'd do to me. That company went down 5 months later due to spending alot of money on consults instead of hiring frontend devs without their ridiculous requirements.

Impossible fucking standards.

I gave assessments out, but it was in a language we were using as well as defined what they needed to correct.

Basically it was a mini, "this is how we work" test.

I was looking for people to follow instructions, critical thinking skills, and technical understanding.

Out of 30 entry level applicants, one, just one, ever completed it. It wasn't even hard.

Fix some backend calls, change a table on the UI, and create a new feature you would like to see in the "app".

We still hired some of those 30, but we never looked at those that never tried.

I give out optional ones. You can either do it with me in the interview, or you can do it at home if you're worried about nerves in the interview.

@swagnette
Imagine applying for an accountant position - just to get handed out that Java test...

@sariel
No wonder most didn't even try.
They don't have time for such bullshit. They need to find a job - not invest hours into a single company before even knowing what their chances are against the dozens to thousands of other applicants.
What you are actually doing with that test is filtering out the ones who are able to weight costs, benefits and probability of success against each other.

Maybe, you are like me and always got your jobs by word of mouth without needing to actually apply. But most of the devs out there don't. They have to invest time in searching for actual open positions (real hard today, where most positions are actually just recruiters fishing for assets). Then they have to tailor an application to each of the offers and apply. Some do that for a hundred positions. Imagine every one also requiring a test...

@Oktokolo I actually designed it to be done within an hour.

Like I said, these tasks weren't things like "integrate with Salesforce".

They were things like, "this page has 3 errors, find them in your browser development tools and fix them".

I won't waste anyone's time, but something must be understood. My time is also important. Spending at least an hour on each applicant is almost a whole week of effort, and that doesn't include the other 7 people involved.

I don't want to waste my time just to find out after they've been hired that they refuse to follow directions and cannot understand our stack.

@sariel
Just ignore my comment then. An hour is fine and two would be too.