[arbus5672]

I run the recruitment process for our small firm. Here is our process that has minimized frustrations like the link OP describes:

Every candidate that we are interested in from the resume pool gets a screening call from an engineer. If they pass it, they get the option of their technical test being take home or over interview.

If they do the take home version, we have a marking rubric for the features that we are looking for in a solution along with sample solutions at the different levels. Anyone who does the take home assessment gets feedback about their submission based on that rubric so that the feedback is consistent across the multiple interviewers.

In some cases, we also share our solution if the candidate had follow up questions on the feedback that was provided.

[calvinmorrison]

My email interview, and job i got later at fastmail was for an Ops/Sysadmin job. The todo list was simple, go write a basic logrotate script. I was hired and worked there for a few years. I don't hate take homes. I don't think they're as much of an indicator of quality or a company litmus test as people here think it is

[arbus5672]

There may be a bias of opinions here of people who otherwise are totally qualified for the job that they are applying for bemoaning all the hoops that they have to jump through to show that they are qualified.

I’d say about a good one in eight people who have passed the phone screen end up with shockingly dismal results in the technical screen. There really is a bimodal distribution of skill in the industry. The goal of these assessments isn’t to see how good folks are but to weed out those who are absolutely terrible.