Item — HN Reader

>> They refuse to do the project because “someone will hire me without it”.

This is wrong in certain cases. The candidate may have significant contribution to an open source project or may have shipped an open source project as an owner.

Why should that candidate not refuse? You already have the code in front of you. If you as an employer cannot take the time out to go through that and evaluate what you would otherwise with your take home assignment, then something is not right.

This one size fits all rigid process won't work. Given a process, the employers must learn to be flexible, all the while expecting employees to do so, is insane. So certain qualified candidates saying 'someone else will hire me' is not arrogance, but fact.

1 comments

But the method proposed is only 20% about code. It's mostly about seeing how someone approaches a piece of work and discusses a solution in a meeting. You can't get that from browsing GitHub.

You can from browsing GitHub, reading the code, and then asking how the code came to be as it is. Talk through why they went with the particular structure they chose, talk about the research which resulted in the UI, ask why they chose functional testing but not unit testing, think of a new feature that would be interesting and talk over how they'd approach adding it.

Agreed. The Github code is a substitute for the take home assignment. If his GH code is good enough as per the employer standards, invite him in office to explain the work he did on that project.

Now employers don't want to do that most likely I assume is because no one wants to go through the pain of figuring out the details of GH code. OTOH, the employer is expecting the candidate to understand the problem assigned to him and come up with a solution!

I don't think you understand how getting a job works. It's entirely appropriate for the amount of effort expended by two parties to be asymmetrical.