It’s been a tough six months for me in terms of searching for a new job after being made redundant back in February.
I decided to take a month off before looking for a new role and since I started hunting around it has been so difficult to get through the door for an interview and if I got that far some of the interviews that I have had have been shocking.
Some of the things I have been asked to do and replies I have had will be familiar to others as I have talked to other developers who have experienced the same thing or even worse but I am here to talk about mine.
Scenario One
Being given a number of tasks and given 30mins to complete when it’s clear that it will take 90mins to do a half decent job.
This has happened twice to me and when you get given a brief that will take you 15mins to read to get what you need to do.
Another 15mins to work out how you are going to do it and then 45min-1hr to actually do the work to a standard that is acceptable for a technical test.
You have to take into consideration there is pressure that would not normally be there as it’s a technical test.
You have may have created that test and run it by multiple candidates but they have seen it for the first time. How would you feel if having seen it for the first time?
Scenario Two
Adding tasks to try and catch you out or a trick task.
Why? It’s not something you would do in an every day situation so why do it to a person who is already under pressure to try and prove to you that they are the right person for the job.
Give them something that is solid that will be useful for them and the team they will be working in.
Scenario Three
Please please please do not run a candidates GitHub account and CV through AI.
I have had this happen twice now and shows that whoever wrote the instructions for AI to follow did not do it properly as both times they have only gone through my own repos and not the ones that I have contributed towards with the companies I have worked at.
It’s also lazy and I know a few department managers who have used AI and regretted it as they have found out that the person is actually a lot better than what the results from AI come out with.
Just be human.