

Job application challenge - ropiku
http://integrumtech.com/2010/06/so-youd-like-to-work-for-integrum/

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derefr
This is exactly the sort of thing I wish more companies did: not relying on
external credentials, _or_ judging the developer in one marathon interview,
but instead, just giving the developer some work representative of what they'd
be up to every day at your company, and seeing if they can accomplish it.

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Periodic
I think both are good to have. The challenge will get you the applicants whose
resume and CV might not reveal how talented they are. The traditional route is
great for people who are already well established who want to drop off a
resume through a friend and don't have much time for a long interview test
process. I suppose the tests might not be that hard if you really are
experienced, but they are a huge barrier when you are low on time and energy.

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idoh
I know that getting a stack of resumes to vet is a big pain. But surely there
is a better way to find good candidates then seeing how many hoops they can
jump through.

Basically, isn't the ideal employee one that would be entertaining multiple
offers? Doesn't this challenge filter those candidates out?

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btmorex
I sort of agree. Actually, I like companies that give applicants challenges.
But usually they are fun and interesting challenges, not "refactor this crappy
code". Refactoring bad code is a useful skill, but my guess is that they're
going to end up filtering out a lot of qualified people just because their
challenge sounds boring.

~~~
frossie
If the job involves a lot of refactoring, or, if looking at legacy systems is
how the job will derive its requirements, then it is a good test.

I tend to object to "fun and interesting challenges" more - all they tell me
is that somebody had a lot of spare time, and don't rule out the possibility
that somebody needs "fun and interesting" stuff in order to produce work.

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frossie
Submit your resume via git? What is there not to like here?

It will weed out a lot of the nohopers, without making the decent people feel
like they are jumping through unreasonable hoops. I like it.

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cookiecaper
I think that those hoops are unreasonable. When you give tests like this, you
need to be respectful of the applicant's time; they all have others things to
do and other opportunities to consider, it is incredibly arrogant to demand
anything that takes more than a couple of hours imo unless you are both very
serious about placement.

The refactoring of the code is probably OK; I haven't looked at the code so I
don't know for sure, but writing a Ruby script with the GitHub API and the
second task is a bit over the top. They should choose one or the other; if an
applicant can refactor code well, he should be able to know how to use
libraries, and if an applicant can write clean code to do the GitHub task,
then he should know how to refactor. No need for both.

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InclinedPlane
They're just front-loading and automating the 1st pass of candidate screening
(normally something that might be done in a phone screen). I think this is
perfectly legitimate.

For anyone who is seriously applying for a position this isn't a significantly
greater burden compared to the normal multi-stage application process at any
other company. For people who are just blanket spamming their tarted up resume
to anyone and everyone hoping for a lucky hit, this is a lot more work in
comparison. But I think that's a feature not a bug.

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kevinpet
This is great, except for the minor issue of not wanting to announce to the
world that you're applying there.

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JoachimSchipper
As obliquely pointed out in the comments, there are ways around that, e.g.
[http://www.rot13.com/?text=ubfgvat%20gur%20ercbfvgbel%20lbhe...](http://www.rot13.com/?text=ubfgvat%20gur%20ercbfvgbel%20lbhefrys)).
For that matter, it would be _hard_ to find this if you don't put your name on
your resume and create a new Github account...

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weaksauce
Exactly. Create a new account and don't put anything identifiable on the
resume if you are worried about it. You can just correspond to them via the
built in github messaging.

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scorchin
Did nobody else see the flaw in this?

The GitHub forks are public. If you wanted to, you could just look through ~30
forks and see what their commits/code look like. It would be fairly easy to
find the "best" solution and work from there.

Furthermore, having your resume public gives you a better idea of how
qualified you are in comparison to your peers that are applying for the same
role.

Seems slightly fishy to me.

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known
Between _passion_ and _experience_ what would you choose?

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bhiggins
I am a fan of simple code-writing challenges after having seen the results: a
lot of bad code...

