job interview take home assignment example

Take Home Interview Assignments

6 tips for managers and interviewers to do them right.

With a new year, many of us are looking for that new role. The Great Resignation of 2021 continues to accelerate, and I expect we’ll see lots of people and jobs in motion.

(want to listen to the podcast version of this newsletter? check the link below)

Maybe you’re interviewing now. Maybe you have roles to fill on your team. Maybe you are looking to switch jobs or companies. On either side of the table, whether interviewer or interviewee, take home assignments may play a part in the decision. This goes for many roles, from UX to product management to engineering and beyond.

We covered this topic (among others) in a recent Product by Design podcast.

But I want to dive a little deeper into tips for creating good take home assignments. This goes for interviewers and managers creating the work, as well as candidates who are given the assignments.

Take Home Assignments

Take home assignments include anything you ask a candidate to do outside of your actual interviews. It includes specific prep work that you may have a candidate do for an interview or round of interviews.

I’m generally a fan of take home assignments. I like them when structured correctly. They give managers the ability to see aspects of a candidate that may otherwise be difficult to explore in standard interviews. They give candidates the ability to showcase more skills than just answering interview questions, whether that is writing, presenting, critical thinking, etc.

Take home work also allows for some flexibility and time to think. Rather than trying to answer questions on the spot, a candidate can think through it and prepare. I personally value that as a candidate, since I’m better at preparation than on-the-spot answers. I also value it as an interviewer because I get to see the best of someone, rather than potentially a flustered version of them.

All that said, it is important we structure take home assignments in the right way to get the most out of them and not to burden candidates.

So how do we do that?

Tips For Creating Take Home Assignments

Make it clear.

First, make the expectations for the assignment clear. If you want a candidate to create a presentation, tell them that. If you want them to prepare 3 wireframes, then tell them you are looking for 3 wireframes.

There may be some value in leaving work open-ended, so candidates can approach however they like. But that should also be clear.

When I was hiring for a UX designer, we created a take home assignment for our candidates with a specific problem area and a deliverable of 3-5 mockups they could walk us through. We tried to be very clear about what we hoped to see and what the purpose was. And it worked well.

As a candidate, if you feel like something is unclear, ask about it. Remember, hiring managers are people too, and often really busy. So they may have overlooked something or just not taken enough time to flesh out the details. Don’t assume that asking questions will hurt your chances. If something is unclear to you, it’s probably unclear to others, so don’t go away and get to work if you don’t feel like you understand. It will be a massive waste of your time and everyone else’s.

I struggled early in my career to ask enough questions. I felt like I should always understand, and if I didn’t, it was my fault. But that’s not necessarily the case. Don’t be afraid to ask questions!

Make it Appropriate for the Role

As a hiring manager, you should ensure that what you’re asking candidates to do is appropriate for the role. Meaning that a junior UX designer shouldn’t have to create a design system. Or a product manager shouldn’t create a strategy presentation for a new product you’re thinking about.

Those may be good tasks for a potential head of product or UX lead, but they are too much for more junior roles. Make sure that the ask is congruent with the role.

Make it Timeboxed

Along the same lines as ensuring that the take home work aligns with the role, you should also ensure that there is a way to limit the work as well.

This involves really thinking through the structure of what you’re asking. Since you can’t actually dictate how much time a candidate spends on a task, you need to be really thoughtful about what you’re asking someone to do.

Because, let’s be real, even if you said that you don’t expect something to take more than an hour or two, those Type A personalities who demand perfection of themselves will likely spend an order of magnitude more time on it, especially for opportunities they really want.

I know, because I’ve done that.

I recall an assignment I received several years ago. It involved preparing a presentation around a potential new product. It wasn’t supposed to be more preparation than an hour or two (yeah right). I spent several hours each night for a week working on that. And then at least 8 hours the final day before I sent it over. All told, I probably spent 20-30 hours working on it. An order of magnitude more than I should have.

I did a tremendous amount of research into the industry. I created not only a pitch, but an entirely new business model. I refined all the transitions and made the entire presentation really eye-catching and professional. It was absolutely insane.

By the end, I was not only convinced on the product, I was ready to pursue it whether or not I got the role I was interviewing for. I was almost ready to go raise funds and create my own company.

I didn’t though. And didn’t get the role either. Which worked out just great because that company ended up not creating the new business line, and doing a massive amount of layoffs shortly after we had spoken.

Regardless, the level of effort I put in was far too much. That is partly on me, but also on the manager for not structuring the assignment in a way that limits the time spent.

In my own interviews, I intentionally limit what I ask. Like I mentioned above, that may include limiting the number of wireframes. For product managers, I may ask for a one-page document, a half-page answer to a question, or a three-slide presentation on a limited topic. These give me the opportunity to see specific skills in action (like writing and presenting), without opening the door for endless hours of writing or preparation.

Make it Outside Your Company’s Problems

It’s easy to create a problem-set for the problems you’re dealing with as a company or team. But it’s not fair to ask candidates, who may have limited knowledge of your company or industry, to solve your specific problems.

Additionally, it’s hard to be objective about a candidate’s work when you are so close to the problems and solutions yourself.

This creates the potential for bias. If I give a candidate a take home assignment that very closely mirrors what we’re doing on our team or within our company, I may prefer the candidate who best approximates my own thinking on the issue. And that may blind me as a manager to candidates who arrived at different solutions, but had solid thinking as well as solid writing or presentation skills.

For all of this, I prefer to keep take home assignments more generic and further away from our company- and team-specific issues. Additionally, asking candidates to solve problems specific to your company gives the feeling that you’re asking them to do work for you before you even hire them. That generally isn’t the case, but it gives a bad impression.

Make it a Discussion, Not a Filter

I was reading recently about a company that uses a take home assignment as an initial filter. Before candidates even talk with a manager or recruiter, the company is sending them work to do to be considered.

Don’t do that.

Take home work should come later in the interview process, once the interviewer and the candidate feel like the role is a potential good fit. It should add to the conversation.

As an interviewer, you should only ask for things that you are willing to spend time reviewing and discussing. Take home work should be part of the interview process. If you ask for something as a manager, you should have an interview where you walk through the work, ask questions, and allow the candidate to discuss. This is true of presentations, written documents, etc.

As a hiring manager, I want to see the work, but also want to let the candidate tell me more. If a candidate prepares a presentation, it makes sense to let them present and discuss. If they create wireframes, we want to understand their thinking and ask questions. If they’ve prepared a business document or future press release (one of my favorites) we want to discuss and debate. That is what all these items are for, in an interview and on the job.

As a candidate, if you see companies using take home work as a filter, walk away and don’t look back. You’ve dodged a bullet.

Remember, an hour-long presentation by a candidate requires numerous hours of preparation. Anyone who has done public speaking or created presentations knows good ones require significant work. Potentially, dozens of hours could go into creating an hour-long presentation. Good writing and designing and coding is also labor-intensive and difficult.

As hiring managers, we should understand this difficulty. On top of that, interviewing for roles is rarely the only thing a candidate has on their plate. They may work full-time, have a family, or have other activities and responsibilities. We need to understand this and empathize.

This may include giving the right amount of time for a candidate to do the work they need.

I recall one company many years ago asking me to complete a take home assignment in a standard time-frame they give to all candidates. But that didn’t work for me because I had other things going on. I could understand that they want to level the playing field for all candidates by allowing for the same amount of time, but we have to understand that giving each candidate two days to work on something does not necessarily make it equal . Some candidates may have nothing else to do, and can dedicate 10 hours per day. While others may only have one spare hour per day.

Understand this. And work with candidates to create realistic expectations. The main point isn’t to filter them out, but to give them an opportunity to create good work. If that takes two days for one candidate and six days for another, that is fine.

As a candidate, if it doesn’t seem like your interviewer is showing much empathy or understanding, walk away. It is most likely they are looking for cogs to plug into a system, and believe that they just need to churn through enough people to get there. You want to be valued for the work you do and who you are, not simply for being a cog in the system.

As managers, take home work can be a powerful tool to understand potential candidates. It can give them a chance to show skills and understanding that is difficult in a standard interview format. As candidates, take home assignments can give you more flexibility and an opportunity to go deeper into certain skills you have.

But for take home assignments to be effective interview tools, they need to be structured correctly. Assignments should add meaningfully to the discussion and process, not detract from it or become too onerous. But with a few key tips, we can all make the most of our time, our interviews, and our skills we’d like to showcase.

Other Good Links

In Praise of Unglamorous American Invention (article) - Interesting article praising some lower-key inventions. It includes wood glue, which is near and dear to my heart as a woodworker.

“While some luthiers still use animal glue when they build stringed instruments—yes, the kind rendered from animal hides—most woodworkers have switched to PVA, and especially Titebond, and especially (for projects that need it) Titebond III, which inspires arias of awe all over the woodworking internet…”

The Surprising Power of The Long Game (article) - I’m always about the long game, and this was a good take on short vs long games.

“Every action is a step toward the short game or the long game. You can’t opt-out and you can’t play a long-term game in everything, you need to pick what matters to you. But in everything you do time amplifies the difference between long and short-term games. The question you need to think about is when and where to play a long-term game. A good place to start is with things that compound: knowledge, relationships, and finances.”

The Tech and Products that Stood Out At CES 2022 (article) - I love CES. It’s fun to see new products that may come soon. And other products that are so out there we may never actually see them. Engadget also wrapped up their Best of CES with more.

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Owing to the ever-changing work environment, skill assessment platforms have rightfully gained popularity.

The reason being?

Many companies have expressed discontent with hiring a bad employee due to their inability to identify the right candidate.

HR leaders began leveraging skill assessment tools to make more objective and fair methods to make hiring decisions. These tools help recruiters and hiring managers to assess an applicant's ability to execute specific skills or skill sets, providing an unbiased evaluation of potential candidates.

Undoubtedly, skills assessments have been proven to be three times more effective than relying on gut instinct when assessing CVs. Despite this, some hiring managers have expressed concern that these assessments might confine them to identifying candidates' theoretical knowledge rather than their practical skills.

If you are one of those recruiters, then make use of take home assignments in your hiring process.

Take Home Assignments are one of the most effective ways for hiring managers to find out how candidates tackle different problems that they will most likely face on the job.

Let's take a deep dive and learn what a take home assignment interview is, what it entails, and how hiring managers could utilize it.

Let's get started!

So, what is a Take Home Assignment Interview?

Take home assignment interview, as the name suggests, are interview questions designed to assess the job readiness of candidates with the help of real-world scenarios.

Take home project interview questions are not standardized questions you can use to assess people from different backgrounds. Contrary to that, these interview assignments are specifically crafted to evaluate the skills and abilities required to succeed for which you intend to hire.

Instead of asking applicants to respond to questions on the spot, this form of interview assignment offers flexibility to candidates. It allows applicants to think critically and formulate logical solutions to the problem.

Recruiters introduce this interview question after the initial screening process to gauge a candidate's technical knowledge.

These types of questions generally contain the following:

• A detailed description of the task
• Instructions for candidates
• Guidelines that need to be followed
• Submission data

What is the goal of the take home project interview?

The goal of take home project interviews is to provide candidates with more time and flexibility to think, as opposed to being constrained by a set number of minutes. It helps the hiring team identify candidates who can formulate exceptional work and better meet the organization's needs.

In other words, the goal of the take home project interview is to:

• Evaluate the candidate's skills in-depth
• Simulate professional developer's flow
• Hire project-based candidates
• Better replication of the on-the-job experience

Take home coding assignments differ from other technical assessments because they allow candidates to showcase their abilities in a more realistic setting. Its main objective is to understand how a candidate solves problems, approaches challenges, and works in general.

Many skill assessment platforms available in the market, such as iMocha , allow you and your candidates to code freely and naturally – with the features you expect to have in your IDE.

What are the benefits of take home interview assignments?

Take home interview assignments come with a variety of benefits for companies as well as candidates.

For organizations

• It allows you to see the qualities of a candidate that would be difficult to investigate in standard interviews.
• It enables you to assess how applicants handle unfamiliar problems and their strategy for solving them.
• It lets you quickly move quality candidates through the hiring funnel and avoid developer/interviewer burnout.
• It allows you to assess applicants' algorithm-building abilities.
• Utilizing this tool, you can set deadline-based take home assessments.
• It assists you in evaluating applicants based on their hands-on project management skills that go beyond textbook knowledge, algorithms, and syntax.
• It simulates real-world scenarios to assess potential recruits for practical abilities and promptly onboard project-ready individuals without additional training.

For candidates

• Take home technical assessments give applicants an idea of what technology the company might be utilizing at their potential workplace.
• It allows applicants to showcase more skills than responding to interview questions, such as writing, presenting, critical thinking, etc.
• It enables candidates to hone their research abilities and expand their knowledge of applied topics beyond facts and memorization.

How to include take home technical assessment in the recruitment process?

Before moving on, let's assume you have shortlisted a few software engineer candidates. You are planning to assess their hands-on experience and suitability for the desired role.

You crafted an in-depth take home coding assessment with clear objectives and steps that you expect candidates to complete. However, it is possible that some applicants might feel overwhelmed and choose to withdraw from the hiring process.

The likelihood of that event happening is steep. It has often been observed that candidates tend to remove themselves from the recruitment process if they feel the assignment parameters are unclear or consider it too burdensome due to the overwhelming amount of work required.

To help you avoid this, iMocha offers project-based assessment functionality.

iMocha is a skill assessment software trusted by more than 500 fortunate companies that help enterprises make skill-intelligent decisions to obtain job-fit talent faster. It provides powerful tools for coding interviews , technical recruiting, university recruitment, lateral hiring, and diversity hiring , helping organizations improve the quality of their hires.

iMocha's Project-Based Assessments provide an extensive list of simulators to help evaluate a job candidate's aptitude for the desired role.

That means no time is wasted on manual evaluation, and you can get detailed reports on candidates' skills, competencies, and weaknesses with the click of a button.

Also watch: iMocha projects video on Simulated Assessments on Real-World Scenarios .

These test cases provide a reliable framework for assessing each candidate's qualifications, allowing for a fair and impartial evaluation process. It ensures that everyone who applies for a job has an equal opportunity to demonstrate their ability to meet the required criteria.

• Compare each candidate with a standard baseline.
• Allow applicants to learn more about the desired solution.
• Evaluate each prospect thoroughly.

Tips For Creating Candidate Friendly Take Home Assignments

To create candidate friendly take home assignments, keep four crucial tips in mind.

• Utilize a variety of tasks: Include a wide range of tasks in your take home assignments to keep candidates involved and motivated.
• Set clear deadlines: Give your applicants a set amount of time to finish the project. It will help them stay on track and complete the project on time.
• Provide clear instructions: Ensure that the assignment instructions are clear and concise, so prospects understand what is expected of them.
• Customize the assessment based on the job role: Make sure your project assessments are narrowed down to effectively evaluate the relevant skill set of employees and competencies in the specific role.

What factors should a hiring manager consider for a take home project interview?

Listed below are some essential factors to consider as a hiring manager for take home assignment interview:

• Quality over perfectionism: Take home assignments are an excellent way for the company to determine how candidates would address a real-world business problem. Still, expecting even the most qualified candidates to present a solution they could effectively implement would be unreasonable.
• Time management: Rather than focusing solely on the candidate's technical abilities, take advantage of this opportunity to evaluate how long it took the applicant to complete the assessment, ensuring that they could manage their time effectively and complete the task within the time frame specified.
• Ability to follow instructions: You can also use it to assess an applicant's ability to follow instructions, ensuring that they understand the assignment's criteria and can finish the task as outlined.
• Attention to detail: Pay close attention to the assignment details and ensure their code is properly formulated.

Ankita Kharwal

Understanding talent analytics is vital for your organization's growth. stay ahead of the curve with imocha's insights., subscribe to our blog, related posts, discover 10 best neobrain alternatives and its best competitors.

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What Every Job Seeker Should Know About Work Assignments During the Interview Process

You’re progressing well through an interview process, and you think you’re close to landing that coveted offer, when the employer says, “One more thing—we have a little homework for you.”

This tactic is used by a lot of companies (especially startups), and with good reason: The hiring manager gets a firsthand look at your approach, creativity, quality, turn-around speed, and communication and presentation style and can gauge how serious you are about the position.

If you really want that job, your instinct will likely be to put your best foot forward and provide the most fabulous project the employer has ever seen. But there’s something else to consider: You may end up putting in many hours of work, creating an awesome deliverable—and at the end of it all, still not getting the job. There’s even a chance that the company will take the ideas you labored over for its own benefit, and you’re left not only without an offer, but without compensation for all that hard work.

It’s happened to me: Once, at the end of a second round interview, a hiring manager asked me for a list of quick-hit ideas on increasing user engagement for his consumer website. I spent almost half a day coming up with a list of 10 great ideas, including many examples from other sites. After I proudly sent over my recommendations, I didn’t hear from the company for over two weeks. When I finally got a response, he thanked me for all my hard work and said that the company decided not to pursue the position at this time due to “internal matters.”

Who knows if this really was the case; but to my surprise, I noticed a handful of my ideas were actually implemented within the next few months on their site. Maybe these were ideas already in motion and my assignment only confirmed what was planned, but I couldn’t help but feel that I had been somewhat “used” and regretted putting so much time and effort into this homework.

While there are times you may want to go to the moon and back for a job , it’s also important to be careful how you approach these homework assignments—especially if you’re investing your time into applying to multiple jobs. Here are some tips on how to handle this tricky situation.

1. Understand General Goals and Expectations

First, it’s important to get a sense of how this assignment will factor into the overall evaluation of your candidacy. Is this the final hurdle before the job offer? (It should be.) How will this be weighed with other elements of your interview? (You should get some positive reinforcement that the company’s very interested and just wants to get a sense of how you work.) How long will the assignment take? (Being asked to spend more than 2-3 hours on an assignment before getting hired is bordering on disrespect.)

Don’t be afraid to ask questions like, “Can you help me understand how this assignment will be evaluated?” “Are you looking more for big-picture ideas, or a detailed look at my recommendations?” “Roughly how much time do you recommend I put into this assignment?” It’ll help you understand what the company is looking for and how much time you’re willing to put forth.

2. Ask for Data

Next, remember that you have every right to ask for information that’ll help you better tackle the assignment and not start from scratch (if you were hired, that’s what you’d obviously do , right?). So, put some onus on the company to provide relevant data. For example, if the company is asking for your ideas on potential partners, ask questions that’ll point you in the right direction, like, “Who are your current partners?” “What types of partners are you currently pursuing?” “What are the key metrics that define a successful partnership?”

And if the company doesn’t provide any more information? Do your best, but also make sure you express where you’ve made assumptions based on lack of information—e.g., “Without knowing what your current metrics for successful partnerships are, I’ve made suggestions for partners that will boost both brand awareness and website traffic. Obviously, if the company has different goals, I would be able to adjust these recommendations.”

And then don’t worry—if the hiring manager doesn’t offer it, he or she will understand that you’re operating under lack of information and history.

3. Outline Main Points, Only Tease the Details

More often than not, the primary reason companies dole out homework is to get a better sense of your thought process, as well as how you structure and convey your thoughts and ideas. There’s not necessarily a “right” answer, nor is there a need to get way down in the weeds.

So, don’t stress about providing a ton of information—just outline the main points (bullets and numbered lists usually work well). You can tease out more details as you’re talking through your assignment in the interview without having to write down your specific plans and fully fleshed out ideas. Remember: You don’t want the hiring manager to have the blueprints for your fabulous ideas—you want him or her to hire you so that you can be the one implement them!

4. If You’re Worried, Get an NDA in Place

Depending on the type of job function and level you’re interviewing for, it may not be a bad idea to request a non-disclosure agreement. If there is any confidential information you do not want shared widely, your assignment involves using data from your current employer, or you just have a nagging concern that the company may steal your best ideas, take a precaution and get a simple mutual NDA executed (many template NDA forms are available online for download). Don’t make it too legally formal—the company may get turned off by this move—just let the hiring manager know you just want to make sure things stay confidential and you’d be more comfortable providing details with a simple NDA in place. If he or she refuses to sign, this may be another warning flag.

Knocking a homework assignment out of the park can be an amazing chance to show you’re the best candidate of the bunch, but you never want to get in a situation where you’re wasting your time or being used for free labor. Follow these guidelines, and you’ll be able to present a great deliverable while making sure you’re spending your time and effort the right way.

Photo of man working courtesy of Shutterstock .

Product Management Take Home Assignment Example

· 13 min read ·

🔥 This blog is long. Answering a take home assignment well will bring you one step closer to your dream job. This blog is detailed to help you in every step of the assignment. So read on! But only if you have some time 🤣

Product Management Interviews can be long and arduous with a lot of stages. Each stage has a specific focus. If you are interviewing for a product manager role you will come across the product management Take Home Assignment. It is unique to product management roles and is used to surface specific skillsets. Over the years I have submitted so many of these that honestly I have lost count. As I progressed in my career and started hiring product managers I also created a few of my own to gauge the skills of prospective hires. In this blog we will look at the different aspects of the product manager take home assignment. We will also walkthrough a product management take home assignment example.

What is the Take Home Assignment

This is an exercise that the product manager needs to do on their own. The assignment is generally sent to you after the initial screen round or conversation with the hiring manager. The email contains:

Every company will tweak the format to meet their specific needs. Some might provide context and information that they’d like the candidate to use. Others might decide to keep it open ended and let the candidate make all the decisions.

What is the Goal of the Take Home Assignment

Through this exercise the hiring team wants to find out how you tackle different problems that you will most likely face on the job. The goal is to find out the following:

The Two Types of Product Management Take Home Assignment Questions

New product or service.

The question will be presented to you in the following format:

“You are a product manager at XYZ Corp and tasked with evaluating and launching a new product. What product will you choose? How will you go about evaluating the opportunity and launching the first iteration of the product.”

Update to Existing Product or Service

“You are the product manager for “X” product. Tell us one feature that you would like to implement to improve it.”

As we said earlier some teams like to keep it open ended to see where the candidate ends up with them. The example above is an open ended questions. Others might be more structured and ask you to include specific information.

Example of How to Structure Your Take Home Assignment

Every take home assignment should touch on the following

Start with Questions

Don’t start with brainstorming ideas! When you read the assignment there will be questions that come to your mind. Jot them down. Frame them in a concise and easy to understand manner and then send them back to the hiring team. You can choose to skip this step and make assumptions as you see fit. But let me ask you this - “Would you do that in the real world? At your current job, if you are not sure about something, what do you do? Do you make assumptions and start solving the problem? The answer is NO! You will talk to your manager or peers to understand more about the problem. So why not ask questions about your assignment! Once your basic questions have been answered you can move to the next step.

Define the Problem

Explain the problem you are going to solve with the new product or update to the existing product. Keep your description short and crisp.

Who is facing this problem?

Is everyone facing these issues? Or is it limited to a subset of users? Define the user persona that is facing this problem.

Why does it need to be solved ?

No product is perfect or solves all problems. Why do you think it is IMPORTANT to solve this problem over EVERYTHING else? Why would you prioritize spending time and resources on this versus other things?

How does it align to the organisational goals?

What is the vision of the company? Does the product team have goals that they want to achieve in the next 12-18 months? Does this align with those goals? You can gauge the organisation goals by looking at their public roadmap , website, releases or while talking to your interviewers. (In case the assignment is about a fictitious company, this may be included in the questions)

Learn 7 Ways to Do Market Research

What is your proposed solution?

How will you solve the problem you have described above? First describe the actions that will solve the problem. Then give a short description of the key aspects of the feature or product that will enable users to take those actions. I would encourage you to put in a wireframe along with the description. This does not mean that you spend hours and hours building high fidelity mockups. Create simple wireframes. You can either use a piece of paper and draw a rough sketch with your hand or use a tool like balsamiq which is simple and easy to use.

What are the risks associated with these changes?

Can your solution cause any unwanted issues for the users or the team? Is it going to make anyone unhappy 🤣 . Think about all the different stakeholders that your update will impact. Once you have identified the risks, try and outline what steps you will take to mitigate them. This section doesn’t need to be crazy long. As long as the hiring team knows that you’ve thought about it you’re good!

How will you measure success?

This is the place where you list out the metrics you will follow in order to gauge the success or failure of the release. It is one of the most critical sections of your assignment and carries a lot of weight. Don’t go overboard here. More is not always better. Think through which metrics truly reflect the performance of the product or feature. Stay away from vanity metrics 🤣 . With each metric add the following information:

30 Metrics Product Managers Should Know

Find out How Product Teams Use Data

The assumptions you have made

While working on the assignment you will have questions that will need to be answered. You will have some data but then it might not be enough to get you all the answers. You will need to make some assumptions in order to come to your conclusions. But that’s ok. In fact that is going to be the case every single time you launch a product or feature. So remember to state all your key assumptions clearly in your assignment. You can do it as a separate section or highlight them wherever they are relevant.

6 Key Stakeholders for Product Managers

You have cleared the screening round for your dream product management role in Amazon. You get an email from the recruiter on a take home assignment you need to complete. It looks something like this:

“You are the product manager for the Amazon app. What new feature will you add to improve the product?”

On the face of it this is an open ended question. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they want you to just pitch them whatever idea you might have 😀 . So don’t jump the gun yet and start brainstorming on the coolest idea already 🤣 .

“You are the product manager for reviews on Amazon. Recent feedback from customers has shown that they are not happy with how reviews on the site work? How will you go about solving this issue?”

This one requires you to look at a particular section of the platform.

Solution For Take Home Assignment

For the purpose of this blog we will use the open-ended question example.

First things first  let’s think about what questions come to mind after you have read the assignment?

Send over these questions to the hiring team to see if there is any additional information that the team can provide you. They might send you hard data or insight on which you can base your assignment. Or they can come back and tell you to make your own inferences.

Let’s assume that that the team comes back and tells you the following:

“Our data shows that reviews are an important part of customer conversion. In fact listings with more reviews are 5% more likely to sell than ones with less. However recent surveys have surfaced frustration among users with how reviews work. We don’t have any other information to share regarding the assignment.”

Alright, so this information answers some of your questions. For the remainder we will make and state our assumptions clearly. So let’s start building our assignment step by step as discussed in the last questions:

Users find it difficult to browse through reviews on Amazon.

Who is facing this Problem

All users are facing this problem. We are assuming that this problem is not limited to a particular category.

Why does it need to be solved?

Reviews play an important role in the buying decision of users. Recent feedback has shown that people are frustrated with how reviews work.

What is the proposed solution?

Empower users to search faster and find the right review.  This can be done by adding a search bar to reviews that let’s user type in a specific query. The reviews would filter in real time based on what the user types out.

Assumptions

Minimum Viable Product(MVP)

Will this cannibalise an existing feature?

This update will cannibalize the usage of smart tags in our search results. Overtime we can analyze if one or both features are needed by the users.

What are the risks associated with the update?

Reviews have a high impact on conversion. An update that doesn’t work can negatively impact GMV

How will we mitigate the risk highlighted?

The release will be A/B tested first to validate its effectiveness before making it available to everyone.

A Practical Approach to A/B Testing

Additionally it would be useful to analyse if the user is using the search bar when the same search terms is present in the smart tag

What organizational factors do we need to consider before the release?

Before we start work on the update we need to align different stakeholders on proposed changes. And consider the following during these conversations:

Scheduling the A/B test at the right time across the right category is important for this update.

Disclaimers on the Take Home Assignment Example!!!

Common mistakes to avoid in take home assignments.

Not Asking Questions

Sometimes we are in a hurry to get started. Sometimes we are lazy. Sometimes we are so burnt out with all the interviewing that we decide to skip this step. Sometimes we just want to get it over with. Please ask questions 🙏

Overshooting the length

We can get a bit too excited and try to cram in too much information into our submission. It’s quite understandable. You have done all the hardwork and want to make sure that the hiring team sees that. But please stick to the length. Generally it’s 2 pages with font size 12. Being succinct and presenting information in a concise manner is an important skill that product managers need to posses. So when you turn in an assignment that’s too long it sends the wrong signal to the hiring team.

Not Using Appendices

This is true for any work that you present. Cramming in too many graphs or designs in the middle of your documents makes it difficult to read. Use the limited space you have to highlight the important findings and conclusions you have drawn. Leave all the grunt work out of the main submission and attach them as appendices.

Finishing in one sitting

Don’t try to hash out the entire assignment in one sitting on a Friday night 😆 . Take breaks! Come back and have a look at your assignment with a fresh set of eyes often.

Not citing references

It’s ok to search on the internet. You do that in the real world too. If you are using certain frameworks or citing data make sure to add the references as part of your submission.

Spending too much time to find the most kick*** innovative idea

We don’t want to discount the fact that outstanding ideas will get you brownie points. But your idea is only one of the factors in your submission. I’d rather see a mediocre idea that’s built on a structured approach rather than what sounds like a great idea but ends there and is not backed by logical reasoning, thinking and research.

Not balancing Quantitative and Qualitative data

Product Management isn’t binary, I wish it was 😀 . You can’t focus on only data or only qualitative feedback. You have to use both. You have to look at the hard data but also look at the organizational impact of the updates you propose. In order for any update to be successful it requires a cross-functional effort. So make sure that your assignment is balanced. It shows your ability to think analytically while leading pragmatically.

We hope that you have found the information we shared useful. If you are reading this blog you are probably starting to write your take home assignment.

Download The Take Home Assignment Example Template

Hopefully it will help you structure your assignment.

Remember - there are no bad ideas! So pick one and ask the right questions. Break a leg!

Checkout some of our other blogs that will help you prepare for your product Management Interviews

Product Management Interview Format

Product Management Interview Questions

6 Ways to Prepare for Product Manager Interview

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Table of contents, how to quickly and successfully complete a take-home assignment.

• September 15, 2020

Richard Chen

The take-home assignment has become more popular and important than ever in the Product Manager interview process. At Product Gym, we receive numerous questions from our members about case studies. Most of them are confused about the vague nature of case study prompts or lack of details about what is expected from the candidate.

If you do not have support, you just might be spending all your time working on these time-consuming take-home assignments. Since job hunting is a numbers game , you do not want to spend more time on one case study project than you need to!

let’s break down the take-home assignment with an example. We’ll be going through this case study assignment in the form of a conversation. We’ll go over the candidate’s work and ask them guiding questions to assess if their approach is the best approach to solve the problem.

Dear Product Gym, I am interviewing with a big-name tech firm, and I am on the final round. They have sent me a challenge, and I have to send it back by today at 5. Next Monday, I have to present it in 60 minutes with a 45-minute Q&A afterward. They said it is not necessarily 60 minutes of me presenting, but instead 60 minutes of chatting with the people in the panel. The Q&A is with a different group. The problem that they sent me is very open-ended: Create a product that would improve the health of an obese patient. Go through the problem, solution, product design, product development, product launch, and product rollout strategy. Include a research allocation plan because there is a $50,000 budget and put on the team.

The Take-Home Assignment Conversation

PG: That is a lot for someone to put together, especially in such a short amount of time. And, they are looking for lots of information. How far have you gotten so far?

Candidate: I decided that the problem I am going to solve is that there is too much information out there for patients to figure out the right plan. I created an app to connect patients to dieticians directly through text.

PG: Is it an SMS app where patients can go, “Hey, I am looking for this dietician,” and it would just connect them to that dietician?

Candidate: I was thinking more so that the patients would state what their needs are, and the app would give them a few dieticians to choose from. I am basing the model off of TalkSpace, an app that connects patients to mental health therapists.

In my app, the dietician would chat with the patient and come up with guidelines or a plan for them to follow. The patient would send pictures of their meals for the dietician to review at the end of every week. It would be based on a monthly subscription business model.

This is the basic version. Eventually, I want to make it so that people could share pictures of their food for others to comment on, like a chat forum.

Tackling Case Study Assignment Questions

PG: Is it a chat app or an SMS chatbot?

Candidate: It is not a chatbot because there would be real people on the other end. The reason it cannot be through simple text messages is that with dieticians, it has to be HIPAA compliant.

PG: If your budget is $50,000, why create an app for the take-home assignment when you could create a simple web app? 

You are breaking down the barriers and making it easier to communicate, and so people do not chat through web apps. That is my thought process now. However, I am open to creating a web app.

Candidate: The need is that patients are trying to lose weight, but the overwhelming amount of information makes it difficult for them to seek the right help. My prompt was to create a way to connect patients suffering from obesity with expert advice.

PG: Your reason behind the app solution is that it makes it easier to connect?

Candidate: I talked to a couple of patients and friends who have gone through significant weight loss. A recurring pattern I saw was that they had trouble figuring out who to talk to and were discouraged by the intimidation of having to set up an appointment, go into an office and see someone.

I believe that an app would break down that barrier and make it easier for patients to start that connection.

The Take-Home Assignment Process

Already confused about the candidate’s thought process how they came up with this idea? Make sure you watch our case study solution video with Roman, our case study instructor, to understand how the process works:

Finding an Easy to Use Solution

PG: In the research phase of the take-home assignment, did you ask them if they would install an app on their phone or use a web service?

Candidate: They said that anything that was not phone-based would complicate their daily lives.

PG: The reason I am asking is that if a client came to me wanting to develop this app and told me they had a $50,000 budget, they should know that at least a third of the costs would need to go into the marketing for this.

You would need a solution that is simple and easy to use. You would want to have a mobile web version or a simple website version of it with the accounts and everything set up to chat on there. That solution would be cheaper for you since you have to account for the budget.

The app would work, but you would still need the website because some people might find it easier to go onto their computer at home. In terms of convenience, the most convenient place might be your home.

How to Create a Budget and Timeline

Candidate: I have worked more on web-based products, so I struggle with budgeting. What sort of timeline should I give for creating something like this?

PG: I generally create a scope document first. It should outline the features that I need to have, the features that it should have, and those I want to have in this.

Once you have those need-to-have features figured out, that determines the shortest amount of time in which the app could be built and the minimum amount of money spent.

A need-to-have feature would be the ability to chat with a dietician. A should-have feature would be the ability to choose your dietician.

Candidate: So, the “need” feature would assign whoever is available, and the “should” would let them choose their dietician from a list?

PG: Yes. The “want” would provide a platform that helps them track their progress with the meal plan.  And for the “needs,” you would want to add accounts to collect data from the patients.

How to Present Your Take-Home Assignment Solution

PG: You want a slide that details the solution you came up with. In this case, that is the chatbot. Those are the core features which you wish to include in a section of your take-home assignment presentation. It should state:

• Here is what the solution is.
• Here is what the solution looks like.
• Here is how a user would go through the process within this solution.

Candidate: Should I state them through a wireframe?

PG: Yes. What you can do is create a simple wireframe process that shows everything from signing up, selecting a dietician, and chatting with that dietician.

Candidate: Once I have the wireframe, I say, “Given this is how the app work, let’s figure out how to prioritize within our budget.” Is this when I bring out my scope?

PG: That is when you bring out the scope. Detail the core features you are going to build within the $50,000 budget and what you will have with that budget.

Present Your Go-to-Market Strategy

PG: Once you get past that, they are going to ask you about your go-to-market strategy. You will probably want to do some beta testing with a small group of users to refine the process, get feedback, and adjust before you go on to create, say, the analytics process. If you are collecting analytics, but you do not know what exactly you are collecting, then it does not make sense.

Candidate: How do I say that I am going to get to this small group of users?

PG: That would be your rollout plan. The first plan for any product is to get the core evangelists, the people who will rave and rant with your product and be happy to share it with others. This is to get some traction out there.

Figure out your target market. In your case, diet support groups might be an excellent place to start.

Candidate: I would give them the product for free and ask them to test it out for a month?

PG: Exactly. You are going to take all their feedback, learn from it, and make adjustments to your product .  

Then you can go into the beta phase, where you branch out more and even consider a small advertising budget to get a wider audience with more helpful feedback. By the time you are ready for version one, you will have enough data points and functionality to start collecting analytics.

Candidate: Should my evangelists be identified before beta?

PG: Yes, that is the initial rollout strategy. You want the evangelists to validate that what you have created makes sense. They would have been with you from the start to be more sympathetic towards what works and what does not work. 

From there, make adjustments based on their feedback and come up with a beta version. Evangelists can comprise up to 30 users, and the beta can have 500-1000 users.

Rollout Strategy vs Product Launch

Candidate: What is the difference between the rollout strategy and the product launch?

PG: The product launch would be after the beta. That is when you put in the money for the marketing to reach a broader audience who are not from your initial group of users. Once they come on, they should see the immediate value and expect a functioning product.

Candidate: One thing about dieticians is that they can only practice within the state, meaning I would have to launch the app state-by-state. How should I go about this?

PG: This would also be a part of your rollout strategy. You can test the app in one state, see how it goes, and then release it in others. You can replicate the model you created in, for example, New York in terms of the rollout, and make sure you are abiding by whatever specific rules for each state there are regarding dieticians. By that point, if you are rolling out to New York, your goal would be to get dieticians on board from the local state.

Candidate: I do the wireframes, and as far as the development part, should I have a roadmap or just a scope of the needs that I am addressing?

PG: I would select the technology you will use to build it out instead of a full-blown roadmap. For your budget, I would go with something like React Native. It helps create a mobile application framework. You need to have a back-end and a front-end working, and an API that connects both of them.

How to Manage Your Budget

Candidate: Should I put the $50,000 budget allocation before I go onto technology?

PG: It depends on the style. I would probably mention it first, and then define the budget for each phase throughout your presentation.

Candidate: How would I deal with paying out the dieticians beyond that first beta?

PG: That is why I said you should have evangelists. You could have the dieticians work with you without paying them, as they are the initial set of influential users on there.

You can say that the initial set of dieticians agreed to be part of the pilot program once the app has rolled out, you can consider what to pay out to the dietician.

The rest of the marketing should go towards   paid advertising .  You want to have a focus group to get feedback from the users, collecting that data, and making the right adjustments.  I would suggest reading up a little more on the rollout strategy to align with what you have come up with so far.

Candidate: Should I include the website as part of my rollout?

PG: Yes. The reason behind choosing React Native is that you can build both the website and the app simultaneously. That would make for more efficient use of your $50,000.

For the back-end, you could quickly build something on Firebase, at least for the first version. Firebase would speed up your development, and everything will be free as far as infrastructure costs. 

You would need a developer for the front-end and one for the back end. Since you have a designer, that would make it around $7,500 for each of those people for the project’s entirety.

Go Above and Beyond: Get Your Take-Home Assignment Reviewed by a Professional

You’ve worked through the assignment and put your solution into a slide deck to present to a panel of interviewers: congratulations! But if you want to go above and beyond to impress the hiring team, dedicate some time to getting your take-home assignment reviewed by a professional.

A fresh set of eyes may catch typos and grammar errors, but will also be able to point out the areas where you can improve the solution overall. A Product Manager who’s gone through multiple technical interview rounds is going to be able to assess your take-home assignment and solution from the perspective of the interviewer and use their experience to help you polish it.

At Product Gym, our interview coaches routinely check over members’ case study presentations, offering insight, constructive criticism, and tips on how to make their technical interview round a success.

Solving take-home assignments isn’t just a good practice for acing your interview — it’s also an excellent way to develop applicable Product Manager skills . That’s why we include classes on case studies in our program. Our case study curriculum was developed and continues to be taught by Senior Product Manager for Atlassian,  Roman Kolosovskiy .

Because we’ve been working with Product Manager job hunters for the past five years, we’ve had ample opportunity to test and perfect the strategy we teach our members on how to ace a take-home assignment. We’ve even compiled a bank of case study prompts that aspiring Product Managers have received in their interviews so that members can exclusively access to hone their problem-solving and storytelling skills

Nail Your Take-Home Assignment

Beginning to end, your take-home assignment should demonstrate how you approach a problem. You’ll want to do your research, have a clear understanding of your target market, and demonstrate how well you prioritize and plan with a structured approach. You got this!

Want one-on-one help solving case studies and acing the Product Manager interview? Product Gym’s coaches are available to help our members at every stage of the job-hunt. Schedule a free consultation with our career coaches to see if the membership program is the best fit for you. We’d be happy to answer any questions you have, and get you on track to landing the Product Manager job of your dreams.

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Cracking the Code: Mastering Take-Home Assignments for Product Management Interviews

Navigating a product management interview, especially with the added challenge of a take-home assignment, can indeed be daunting. However, with the right strategies and preparation, you can approach these assignments with confidence and excel. This comprehensive guide aims to provide you with actionable tips and insights to help you tackle your product management interview assignments effectively. From understanding the assignment requirements to organizing your approach and delivering a polished final product, each step of the process will be covered to ensure you are well-equipped to succeed. Whether it's analyzing case studies, presenting solutions, or demonstrating your problem-solving skills, this guide will empower you to showcase your abilities and make a lasting impression on potential employers. So, fear not! With this guide as your companion, you'll be ready to ace your product management interview assignments and take the next step in your career with confidence and poise.

What's the purpose of Take-Home Assignments?

Take-home assignments serve as an integral component of the interview process for companies seeking to assess candidates' suitability for product management roles . These tasks are designed to provide hiring managers with insight into candidates' problem-solving skills, product thinking abilities, and approach to real-world scenarios. By completing the assignment, candidates have the opportunity to showcase their capabilities and demonstrate their thought process in addressing complex challenges. This practical demonstration allows recruiters to gain a deeper understanding of candidates' potential as product managers, beyond what can be gleaned from traditional interviews alone. Ultimately, take-home assignments serve as a valuable tool for evaluating candidates' readiness and suitability for product management roles within the organization.

Let's take a look at 9 key points to remember for you to master Take-Home Assignments:

1. Decoding the Assignment

Deciphering the assignment begins with a meticulous examination of the brief provided. This involves dissecting the problem statement, objectives, evaluation criteria, and the anticipated deliverables. Paying heed to any specific requirements or constraints outlined in the assignment is crucial as they serve as guiding parameters for your approach. Understanding the nuances of the assignment ensures that you embark on the task with clarity and purpose, setting the stage for a well-structured and targeted solution.

2. Time Management is Key

Efficient time management forms the backbone of successful completion of a take-home assignment. Crafting a realistic timeline is paramount, allocating adequate time for each phase of the task, from comprehending the problem to research, brainstorming, execution, and refinement. Prioritizing tasks based on their significance and potential impact on the final output is essential to ensure that no aspect of the assignment is overlooked or rushed. By adhering to a well-planned schedule, you maximize productivity, minimize stress, and optimize the quality of your solution.

3. Research and Immersion

Delivering a compelling solution hinges on immersing yourself in the intricacies of the product domain, target audience, and user personas delineated in the assignment. Thorough research acts as the cornerstone of informed decision-making, providing valuable insights into user needs, market dynamics, competitor landscape, and industry trends. The depth and breadth of your understanding directly influence the strategic soundness and relevance of your solution, making comprehensive research a non-negotiable aspect of the process. By delving deep into the subject matter, you equip yourself with the knowledge and perspective necessary to devise innovative and impactful solutions.

4. Define Your Approach

A well-defined approach serves as the roadmap for navigating the complexities of the assignment and devising a structured solution. Begin by articulating the problem statement succinctly, ensuring a clear understanding of the task at hand. Breaking down the assignment into manageable components facilitates a systematic approach, allowing you to tackle each aspect methodically. Establishing key milestones enables you to track progress, maintain focus, and ensure timely completion of the assignment. By delineating a coherent and strategic approach, you demonstrate your analytical prowess, problem-solving acumen, and ability to navigate complex challenges effectively.

5. Prototype and Iterate

Prototyping serves as a powerful tool for refining and validating your solution iteratively. Don't hesitate to translate your ideas into tangible forms through sketches, wireframes, or basic prototypes. Prototyping enables you to visualize concepts, test hypotheses, and gather feedback early in the process. Iterating on your design allows you to identify and address potential shortcomings, refine features, and fine-tune the user experience. By incorporating user-centric design principles and feedback loops, you enhance the efficacy and usability of your solution, ensuring alignment with user needs and expectations.

6. Presentation Matters

Presenting your solution effectively is as crucial as the solution itself. Structuring your response in a coherent and logical manner ensures that your ideas are conveyed clearly and comprehensively. Utilize visual aids, such as charts, diagrams, and illustrations, to enhance understanding and highlight key insights. Craft a narrative that guides the evaluator through your decision-making process, rationale, and the strategic considerations behind your solution choices. By articulating your thoughts with clarity and precision, you facilitate a deeper understanding of your solution and its potential impact.

7. Seek Feedback

Seeking feedback from mentors, peers, or industry professionals after submitting your assignment can provide valuable perspectives and insights. Constructive feedback helps identify blind spots, areas for improvement, and alternative approaches that you may not have considered. Embrace feedback as a learning opportunity, leveraging it to refine your skills, enhance your approach, and broaden your perspective. Engaging in dialogue with others fosters a culture of continuous improvement and personal growth, positioning you for success in future assignments and professional endeavors.

8. Stay Authentic

While demonstrating your skills and expertise is essential, it's equally important to stay true to your authentic self in your solution. Let your unique perspective, creativity, and passion shine through, as they are valuable assets that set you apart from other candidates. Authenticity fosters genuine connections and resonates with potential employers seeking individuals with integrity, originality, and innovative thinking. By staying authentic, you build trust, credibility, and rapport, laying the foundation for a successful career in product management .

9. Practice, Practice, Practice

Mastering take-home assignments requires consistent practice, refinement, and honing of your skills . Engage in mock assignments, simulate diverse scenarios, and challenge yourself to think critically and creatively. Actively seek opportunities to apply your problem-solving skills and iterate on your approach based on feedback and experience. With each practice session, you'll gain confidence, proficiency, and a deeper understanding of the nuances of product management. Embrace the iterative nature of learning, remain open to experimentation, and commit to continuous improvement to excel in tackling take-home assignments and succeeding in your product management career.

Approaching take-home assignments for product management interviews may seem daunting at first, but with the right mindset, preparation, and strategy, you can excel in showcasing your potential as a product leader. By understanding the purpose of the assignment, managing your time effectively, conducting thorough research, defining a structured approach, and emphasizing presentation and authenticity, you'll be well-equipped to crack the code and impress hiring managers with your innovative solutions.

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Has anyone here EVER actually gotten hired for a job that had a take home assignment/project as part of its interview process?

I saw a post on another subreddit about how a candidate for a job was rejected because their take home assignment was "too good", as they went above and beyond and therefore those doing the hiring thought the candidate would be over qualified and a flight risk for the role who would get bored easily. The OP said they have done half a dozen take home assignments with no offers, no matter what the hiring team always has a problem with their take home project.

I am in the same boat. I've had to do 5 of them in my job search the last 2 months and I too have been rejected from all of them. The other commenters in that post chimed in saying the same thing - they have not been successful in interview processes that require take homes.

My issue is I have no idea what bar I need to clear with them. Is my take home project going to be compared to others? If so that means you have no choice but to go above and beyond and make sure its great in order to look better compared to everyone else... but that means spending a shitload of time. Am I the only candidate that will be producing a project? So its not being compared to others, great, but still, what bar do I need to clear here? Are you just looking for basic competency? Or do you want me to blow your mind?

These take home projects are all way too open ended. Some have literally handed me a CSV file and they say "analyze this data". Great... no defined goals or end games, and when I ask for clarification or a narrower scope, I get told, "there is no right or wrong answer, we just want to see your data storytelling skills".

Even projects with a more defined outline still have too much ambiguity and vagueness... one assignment I had gave some detailed steps such as group this pandas data frame and show the average quarterly spend by state, then fit a model of your choice to it and show us the most important features that influence the target variable, which is pretty straight forward. But then Step 3 is extremely open ended... "What does this data tell us?" Great, I can answer that, but what bar do I need to clear here? Are you looking for a full length presentation or detailed step by step R Markdown document? Or just a power point slide or two?

I even got rejected because I didn't use infographics to illustrate my answers to questions like "tell us the IQR range of this column"... they never indicated it was to be a client facing or external facing power point slide. I didn't know I needed to present the answer to that in a visually appealing manner, but they used that to reject me.

So I guess my question is, has anyone ever gotten hired in a process that required a take home project? I am seriously debating on whether or not I should continue to waste time on them going forward. I feel like I spend too much time for nothing. If anything I should be billing them for my time because at this point it feels like they use my free labor to get insights on the data I analyze/forecast and then say thanks but no thanks.

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5 Types of Homework Assignments for a Skills-First Hiring Process

CVs and interviews don’t predict job performance, but work assignments can.

It’s really simple; hiring managers need to place competence in context to assess candidates’ technical and interpersonal skills .

If a structured interview process can help flush out candidates with the right attitude and cultural alignment, homework assignments can highlight people with the perfect skillset for the role.

And for a hiring manager, the hiring confidence when selecting between candidates who list the right skills on their resume and those who nail take-home tasks is like night and day.

Curious if work assignments could be a good fit for your company? In this article, we discuss:

• what a homework assignment is all about
• why companies prioritize work assignments over interviews
• how to reassure candidates that work assignments aren’t ‘free work’
• the easiest way to incorporate take-home tasks into your hiring process
• five tips for designing an effective homework assignment

Let’s dive in!

What is a homework assignment?

A homework assignment or an interview project is a task given to a candidate during the interview process that tests whether they have the right skills for a role. Typically these assignments take about an hour or two to complete and have a specific deadline. But they can be more detailed and take up to 5 hours or longer, depending on the role seniority or complexity.

We recommend sticking to a maximum of two hour-projects to keep it fair and reasonable for candidates. As a hiring manager, your main goal is to get a reliable snapshot of a candidate’s technical fit for the job – not to subject applicants to NASA-level testing.

Alternatively, you could swap homework assignments for paid test projects. While many candidates frown upon the idea of completing longer take-home tasks for free (who doesn’t hate free labor?), paid projects are generally accepted as a reasonable alternative. Learn how we leverage paid projects at Toggl Hire.

If a candidate won’t complete an assignment that takes less than 2 hours of their time, likely, they aren’t really interested in the role. So it also doubles as a reliable method to screen out prospective bad hires .

Why do companies ask candidates to complete homework assignments?

Homework assignments help companies get a better idea of a candidate’s strengths and whether they’d be a good match for the role. It’s a bit like shopping online. Seeing a new pair of sneakers you want in a 2D image is great. But getting a fully immersive AR experience really brings the sneakers to life and builds your confidence you’re making the right choice!

These days, many companies prioritize work assignments over interviews , as the typical interview process is outdated. Interviews and CVs alone don’t help the hiring team explore a candidate’s actual abilities. Why? Well, firstly, candidates sometimes exaggerate their qualifications on CVs. Plus, a potential candidate could be great in an interview scenario but terrible at the actual job.

Another reason interviews are passé is that they can open up the hiring team to potential cognitive bias (hiring someone very similar to you). This might seem kind of nice, but in the end, you’ll have less diversity if everyone you hired was a mini-me, right?

Yet, interviews do have an important role to play in the hiring process. But not right in the beginning, necessarily. Shifting the interview portion further down the hiring process steps helps companies focus on quality candidates rather than the search for quality candidates. They could rather confirm the technical fit through skills assessments and then dig deeper during the second interview.

According to HBR, prioritizing homework assignments over interviews can help recruiters better match true competency with the job requirements:

One of us (Jeff) spent several years hiring writers for our firm. He used a scenario-driven writing assignment, administered after a short introductory call, to assess skills. Many publications use writing or editing tests for job candidates, but Jeff approached the task more analytically than most: After receiving the assignment, he conducted a follow-up conversation to understand not just what was on the page, but the candidate’s choices in crafting it. Not only did this give us a sense of how a candidate would perform, but they got a much better sense of the job itself, as we related elements of the task to actual role expectations. By using the same exercise repeatedly, it also built a database of responses over time, a positive feedback loop to better assess the next candidate. Geoff Tuff, a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP – Harvard Business Review

The real benefits are that work assignments and skills assessments paint a truer picture and can also:

• help identify the best person for the job
• reveal an applicant’s work ethic
• reduce the risk of selecting candidates that have lapsed technical skills (especially with the rapid evolution of technology)
• are easy to deploy at scale – you can narrow down the number of applicants from 500 to 50 to save the hiring team loads of time
• help organizations draw in non-typical but strong candidates that broaden the team’s diversity, equity & inclusion
• reduce the risk and cost of a bad hire

What do candidates gain from completing homework assignments?

Job seekers may not often feel enthusiastic about interview assignments. And we get it. People are busy juggling so many things in their day to day that adding one more can feel overwhelming. But those who look at the bigger picture see it as an opportunity to shine.

Work assignments are a foolproof way for job seekers to demonstrate their skills and expertise . And if candidates happen to have any gaps in their experience, they can still demonstrate their aptitude through an online assignment.

It’s also an easy way for candidates to show they’re truly interested in the position and the employer and stand out from the crowd of other applicants.

Not only do these task projects give them a peek into their potential day-to-day responsibilities , but it’s also a window into whether the role is a good fit for them in the long run .

If they find the task takes too long or that the topic or sector is dryer than toast – they should put their sights elsewhere. But if it’s all systems go – then they’ve already got a head start on producing what’s needed for the role.

5 Types of take-home interview assignments

Take-home interview assignments are a popular choice for assessing technical and creative candidates. But now companies are seeing the benefits for other roles too.

Three things that hiring managers should consider for all these types of interview assignments:

• Letting candidates know about the test beforehand. That way, they’re not surprised and feel they’re starting off on the wrong foot.
• Automating everything they can in the testing process, so they don’t leave candidates high and dry in between lengthy hiring phases.
• Using the data they gain from these tests and candidate feedback to update their hiring process.

And now, onto the examples of homework assignments.

#1 Basic skills screening

Quick skills screening tests as a pre-qualifying step can help reduce the volume of applications without any manual effort. That means no manual resume screening or individual candidate feedback.

As applicants get instant feedback via skills test results (they either pass the required score threshold and move on or stop there), recruiters and hiring managers benefit in three major ways: 1) they save hours of their time by automating CV screening; 2) they can easily identify qualified applicants who should move to the interview stage; 3) they ensure a great candidate experience with modern skills-based hiring practices.

Good practices:

Keeping the tests short and sweet to respect candidates’ time and effort. We’d recommend 15 or 20-minute assessments at the kickoff. However, it’s important to ensure the tests are hard, so they actually act like a quality filter for your candidate pipeline.

Bad practices:

Focusing too much on theoretical, bookish questions that make the test feel like a school exam can harm your test completion rate and prevent great candidates from submitting their applications. Additionally, making the screening tests too long or too intrusive (e.g., taking snapshots through the computer camera) can create an unnecessary barrier and reduce your chances of sourcing top-quality people.

#2 Pre or post-interview coding challenges

While a job interview can help hiring managers assess interpersonal skills, such as communication , teamwork, or motivation, it’s not the best medium for evaluating hard skills . Online coding tests help the hiring team select technically capable developers that can contribute to the business.

A recruiter would typically source candidates with the right programming languages listed on their profile or resume. And then, it’s the hiring manager’s responsibility to work out if the applicant has what it takes to write good code. Easier said than done!

That’s why a coding assessment as a homework assignment has become the norm in tech hiring, and most developers are willing to take them on.

Remember, though; candidates don’t owe you free work. Your approach to designing a coding test will determine whether people continue in the hiring process or drop off.

First of all, decide what you want to assess and why. If you’re hoping to ascertain a candidate’s troubleshooting and problem-solving skills, time-boxing the assignment wouldn’t work to your advantage. The candidate can always use the ‘lack of time’ as an excuse for lower-quality work.

Another thing to remember is to set the test at the right skill level, depending on whether it’s a junior, intermediate or advanced role.

Testing skills that are nice to have or don’t match the role is a common mistake. Focusing on too many topics requires candidates to switch context from question to question – which is often confusing and tiring in such a short span of time.

Another issue employers run into is using clunky testing software that candidates need to figure out on the fly. If it takes effort to learn the platform or the platform doesn’t have the required features, developers will have to pay the price.

#3 Portfolio reviews and spec work during the job interview process

Ask any creative about their opinion on spec work, and you’ll likely hear that it sucks. And there are good reasons for graphic designers, writers, and other creatives to hate this kind of work – why should they commit to the project without any promise of payment?

If you’re hiring a professional from the creative field, we highly recommend starting with a live portfolio review . That’s when a candidate can take the interviewer through specific portfolio examples and share the backstory and lessons learned from that project. With creative roles, it’s often the unique style and quirks alongside the technical skills that can help determine the best person for the job.

However, sometimes paid spec work is a much fairer and more accurate way of getting insight into a candidate’s skillset. For tasks that require a highly personalized approach or solution, going the freelance gig route can yield better results.

Inform candidates ahead of time that you’d like to review their portfolio during a live interview. This will give them time to prepare and update their work samples. Ask questions that relate to their portfolio, even if the current samples don’t match your brief – you want to understand their creative process and practices. For paid spec work, make time to discuss the brief in person and agree on a check-in schedule to ensure work progresses in the right direction.

Springing this on the candidate without any warning and expecting the work to be delivered on a short deadline is a questionable move. Even if you’re opting for paid spec work, bear in mind these tasks are often completed in a vacuum and should be evaluated through a less critical lens. And finally, the not-so-secret secret: most creatives are terrible at maintaining their portfolios up-to-date. Giving them the heads-up will increase your chances of selecting the right talent.

#4 Time-boxed homework assignments that go in-depth to evaluate candidates’ competence

This type of home assignment can take many forms – from asking a marketing professional to write a press release for a product launch that already happened to requesting a business analyst to extract key insights from a dataset.

To ensure it’s not perceived as free work, time-boxed assessment projects often focus on real-world business problems that have been solved internally. This way, you can benchmark candidates’ work against your internal quality standard and reassure candidates of your intentions. The sole purpose of interview assignments is to confirm candidates’ technical fit in an efficient manner.

Keep the topic or assignment relevant to the role, and limit the necessary time it’ll take to complete to about 2-3 hours. Remember that the clarity of your brief will largely determine the quality of the deliverables, so be specific about your expectations.

Expecting someone to take 5-10 hours out of their busy schedule for an unpaid assignment is unrealistic.

#5 Paid projects during the interview process

Interviewing is exhausting for both the candidate and the interviewer. So it’s unsurprising that paid interview assignments have been gaining in popularity in recent years.

As a hiring manager, would you rather spend hours of your time interviewing candidates to filter out the bad apples or use the job interview as a way to get to know potential hires?

Homework assignments are exactly that – a simple, efficient method for spotting A-level candidates with the right skills for the job.

As you confirm the technical fit before the interview, both parties can focus on aligning on other important factors, such as the organizational fit , team culture, and manager expectations.

However, many employers have realized that the sentiment around homework assignments has shifted from acceptable to immoral, as applicants began calling assignments ‘free work’. Research shows that drop-off rates increased when candidates were asked to complete a take-home assignment.

Enter paid homework projects.

The perfect combo of practical competency assessment and paid work. Since the candidate receives compensation for their time, these types of assignments can be longer and more complex.

Anything from analyzing the growth funnel to tackling a programming challenge to designing an effective product onboarding experience can serve as a homework assignment idea.

What’s important to note is that these kinds of work assignments allow employers to get a glimpse into a candidate’s work ethic , thinking process, time management, and many other skills that are impossible to assess during the interview process.

If you’re paying for their time, treat them like consultants: provide access to important information, answer their questions and connect them with the right people internally. And be sure to outline the recruitment process at the very start; not everyone will happily take on a bigger commitment project, even when it’s paid.

As a hiring manager, stay in touch throughout the recruitment process to lay the foundations for a good working relationship. Provide clear requirements and timelines to reduce stress, and don’t forget about fair compensation – going below the market rate is disrespectful.

A great way to cause unnecessary stress is to ask candidates to present to a large audience or high-level execs they would never work with on a day-to-day basis.

Be sure to provide a clear agenda for the presentation call ahead of time and prep your interview panel for follow-up questions.

The work assignments and interview process windup

Work assignments are a good thing for companies and candidates alike. The result is like the difference between speed dating and a real dinner and a first date. Yes, they’re both exciting, but in the case of hiring, you need to hire someone that can demonstrate they have the right skills. The cost of hiring the wrong candidate is just too high for companies.

To find truly interested candidates, who have the right aptitude, introduce your team to the benefits of work assignments. You’ll save both parties loads of time and the hassle of a dragged-out interview process and other redundant hiring steps.

If you’re ready to explore how to transform your business’ hiring process from a time-consuming to a slick candidate pipeline, we leave you with five simple tips on designing an effective homework assignment.

5 simple tips for designing a great homework assignment:

• Replace resume screening with basic skills screening. Start the sifting process early with a quick skills screening test . This will weed out the bad eggs and leave you with a selection of good potential candidates.
• Make your assignment brief and easy to understand, and explain the key outputs you expect.
• Match the level of the homework assignment to the level of the role. Unrealistic tasks will only scare people off.
• Don’t request candidates to solve super-specific business problems. Make the assignment generalized, not based on a super specific problem your business is experiencing.
• Give the candidate a chance to show and tell. That way, you get insight into their thought process, presentation skills, and even emotional intelligence when their viewpoint is challenged.

Have a peek at our Test Library for more assignment ideas, and good luck!

Juste loves investigating through writing. A copywriter by trade, she spent the last ten years in startups, telling stories and building marketing teams. She works at Toggl Hire and writes about how businesses can recruit really great people.

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Why Take-Home Assignments are the Biggest Mistake for Hiring Managers

There’s no “right” way to hire.

Some companies are comfortable having a 30-minute conversation and pulling the trigger, while others might want a couple of steps and additional interviewers involved in the process to ensure they’re getting multiple opinions on who to hire. 

And while some employers make it a point to stay on top of the latest industry trends like the ones found in our 2023 Salary Guide , others fall short and — time and time again — make the same mistakes.

Why the take-home assignment interview is a big mistake

Different interview processes work for different companies. But there is one interview mistake I’ve seen across various industries — for both contract and full-time hires — that creates a major bottleneck in the interview process, and that is the take-home assignment .

Take-home assignments can be called something different depending on what the role is.

• For a marketing position, it might be a case study .
• For a software development position, it might be a coding test .
• For a client-facing role, it might be a presentation .

Regardless of the name, the outcome is often the same: candidates you were excited about drop out of the interview process, and you find yourself back at square one again and again. 

From my experience in staffing, I strongly advise my clients against incorporating a take-home assignment into their interview process. 

Why You Shouldn’t Assign a Take-Home Assignment

No one likes to do take-home assignments for free..

When asking candidates to do an assignment during the interview process, it’s often the work that they will be doing once they get hired, so it’s essentially asking them to work for free.

For candidates, time is money, and it’s time that can be spent working for their clients who are paying them. 

This interview mistake doesn’t respect people’s personal time.

Imagine you’re working 9-5 and looking for a new job. You also have two kids who need to be picked up from school, fed, bathed, and put to bed every night.

You are so overloaded in your job that you sometimes have to work after hours. When would you have the time to also fit in doing an assignment that can take anywhere from 2-10 hours?

Candidates often cannot prioritize doing additional work because it will take time away from something else they need to get done. The longer it will take a candidate to find the time to complete the take-home assignment, the more likely their interest in the job opportunity will wane. 

Other companies aren’t making this interview mistake.

As much as you want to vet candidates for the right skill level, it’s important to be competitive with how other companies are hiring, so you don’t lose out on top talent.

Creatives often get hired based on their portfolios—without an interview. Developers get hired off of a single Zoom interview.

Higher-level roles get hired after multiple rounds of interviews, which function as conversations with various stakeholders at a company, without being asked to do homework for an interview other than preparing.

If you ask a candidate to do an assignment before engaging them in the next step of an interview process, they might say they are happy to do it, but the truth is they will usually wait to start it until completing any other interviews they have lined up in hopes of getting a decision from another employer sooner.

This interview mistake fails to filter out people who aren’t serious about the role.

Many companies think these assignments will show how much a candidate wants to work at their company.

I strongly caution against this logic. The post-COVID job market is more competitive than ever, as companies with once-traditional mindsets around employees working onsite have adapted to now offer fully remote roles.

This means that candidates now have access to nationwide job opportunities and are getting job offers faster than ever before.

If seeing how serious someone is about a role at your specific company is important to you, gauging how much they researched the company before the interview is a great way to find that out.

Hiring Managers Should Avoid the Take-Home Assignment

Making the common interview mistake of requiring a take-home assignment most often results in the assignment not getting completed and the candidate pursuing a different employment opportunity that doesn’t require an additional assignment. 

It’s understandable that a hiring manager would want to test a person’s skill before offering them a job. The good news is that there are ways to do this that don’t involve asking a candidate to do extra work.

Ways to Avoid Making this Interview Mistake

Ask to see sample work from potential candidates..

Copywriters and designers have portfolios, developers have GitHubs, and high-level individuals can often pull sample proposals and plans they’ve put together in the past to exhibit their work.

If you have questions about how much they did themselves, what went into the decisions they made, or other related questions, the interview is the perfect place to dive in and find out. 

Ask your job candidate to do a test in real-time on the interview.

Some hiring managers prefer not to do this because candidates might feel “put on the spot” and not perform their best.

However, I can’t think of a single employer I have worked with who didn’t care equally about the candidate getting to the right answer, as they did about how they got to the right answer and what that showed about their thought process.

Doing a test or exercise together, and being able to speak with the candidate during it, is a great way to understand their logic.

Ask your job candidate scenario-based questions.

If you have a concern about how a candidate would handle a situation—whether it’s technical, about communication, or how they work with a team—ask specific, pointed questions to find out your answers. 

Requesting references is a great way to avoid this interview mistake.

It is completely acceptable to extend an offer pending reference checks so you’re able to get background information from someone who worked with this person before and can vouch for the candidate’s expertise.

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The Final Word On Take-Home Assignments for Hiring Managers

Hiring is a gamble. It’s normal to have a degree of trepidation about extending an offer to someone without a guarantee that they’ll be able to perform at the level you expect. But the best way to see if someone can do the job is to trust your gut and give them the chance to prove you right. 

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• Contact Mondo today for all your hiring needs
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You’re reading an excerpt of The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring , a book by Osman (Ozzie) Osman and over 45 other contributors. It is the most authoritative resource on growing software engineering teams effectively, written by and for hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and candidates. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, over 800 links and references, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.

A take-home assignment (take-home or takehome) is a coding task given to technical candidates to complete on their own time. Candidates are typically given a day to several days to complete a take-home.

​ controversy ​ Take-homes are controversial. While there are many pros for the companies assigning them, they are less valuable in terms of the candidate experience. Nonetheless, they do have some advantages for candidates.

Benefits of Take-homes

​ candidate ​ Take-homes remove a lot of the stress associated with onsite challenges. Candidates get to use their own tools and work in the style they would if they were on the job. They can review and iterate on their work, take time away to think or rest, and rewrite. One senior engineer put it this way: “Most employees ‘take home’ their work if you think about it. You get work, you go away and think, you do it, you sleep, you come back and review it. That’s how our jobs work.”

For companies, take-homes have arguably the lowest false negative rate of any interview format—“the truest signal,” as Scott Woody, former Director of Engineering at Dropbox, put it to Holloway. A few factors account for this:

Take-homes give the candidate enough time to do the work in an environment that they’re comfortable with, so you eliminate the noise of a whiteboard interview .

It’s very hard to hide weaknesses in coding ability in a take-home, and follow-up conversations can tell you almost everything you need to know about how a candidate thinks through problems.

Follow-ups also allow you to weed out and correct for any negative signal or false signal—for example, if a candidate cheats, talking through their work will help you figure that out.

Follow-ups are an important part of the take-home evaluation; in this respect, take-homes are the first step of a larger conversation. A good take-home will mimic assignments the candidate might reasonably be asked to do on the job and will give you practical signal on their abilities, creativity, and style.

Here’s how a sample assignment might progress. Let’s say the take-home is something like “Build a simple web-based calculator app” or “Build an AI version of Tetris.” When the candidate returns, you might read the code and interrogate it together, bringing the initial asynchronous assessment into a synchronous evaluation:

You ask the candidate to critique their work.

You may then ask them what they would do given another 20 hours; or say, “How would you invest 10 more hours on this?” Questions like “What feature would you remove?” and “What feature would you add?” will further refine your understanding of their work.

An additional useful question is, “What shortcuts did you take, and why did you think that was the right shortcut?”

Downsides of Take-homes

​ caution ​ The major downside of take-homes is the time commitment they require. Because the market is so competitive, asking a strong candidate to give up their weekend for a take-home can lead them to drop out of your process. Senior candidates may feel that being asked to do a take-home is a waste of their time. For these reasons, take-homes usually make sense further along in the funnel . They require a lot of engineering time and investment from interviewers and candidates, so they aren’t ideal for screening. Some companies opt to pay candidates for the time they spend on these assignments, but this doesn’t always make a difference. A senior manager at Dropbox told us that before the company pivoted from take-homes, 20% of candidates would simply not complete them. Less-competitive candidates were more likely to complete the assignment, because they didn’t have competing offers. The pass-through rate was close to 10%. If you’re asking candidates to invest 15 hours, and their chance of passing through is 10%, the value asymmetry is strong.

Despite the high signal achieved, interviewers, too, spend hours of their time designing take-homes, scaffolding in multiple languages, and reviewing code, and with such a low pass-through rate, this hardly pays out.

​ danger ​ The other major con of take-homes is that they explicitly discriminate against people who have families or adverse financial situations, or who work more than one job. If these candidates are in the hiring pipeline at more than one company, they may receive multiple take-home assignments at once, making them impossible to complete, and this may cause the candidates to drop out of your process.

Take-homes also open up the possibility that a candidate may cheat by asking friends to help or collaborate. Additionally, with a take-home, you’re asking candidates to work in a vacuum, which doesn’t match to most work environments, where you’re hopefully able to ask questions and get feedback as you progress.

​ caution ​ Take-homes are difficult to timebox and thus difficult to assess fairly. If candidates have been given 48 hours to turn in an assignment, you might be comparing candidates who spent 40 hours with those who spent only 2.

One way to avoid this false signal is to pay people an hourly rate for the assignment; but candidates can lie, either saying they worked more hours so as to receive the pay or fewer hours because they want to look impressive.

There are situations in which the pros of take-homes outweigh the cons. Smaller companies may find it easier to assign take-homes than to expend the time and resource investment in a longer pipeline, where multiple interviews would be needed to get the same signal. Younger engineers trying to break into the industry may prefer take-homes because they provide a chance to demonstrate skills they haven’t yet had a chance to prove on the market. If there’s a candidate you haven’t gotten clear signal from yet, adding a take-home to their pipeline will usually tell you one way or another whether the bet will pay off. Scott Woody, former Director of Engineering at Dropbox, told us that people who tend to shine on take-homes have nontraditional backgrounds: “They’re hackers, or they never took CS in college, and they’d fail out of our normal process. But we can see they’ve been doing all this practical work on the side, so let’s give them this practical thing and they’re going to build something singular.”

Take-home Tips

Using a tool like Takehome.io can help with timeboxing take-homes. It might seem like the option of timeboxing would help solve a lot of the cons of this format, but many engineers hold the opinion that time limits introduce further artificiality that compromises what could otherwise be a clear signal. There are tradeoffs any way you approach it.

If you do choose to give take-homes, it’s important to be clear with the candidate that the results will only be used for evaluation and not to produce work for the company. You might also provide an upper bound on the amount of time a candidate should spend on the take-home. When sending candidates the assignment, it’s important to let them know what it is that you will be evaluating—the code? the creativity? the speed? This will help ensure that they don’t waste time on something that won’t translate as much to the assessment and the eventual job. You likely also will want to avoid noting things as nice-to-haves unless they are truly necessary for the assessment.

One idea worth noting to help make the candidate experience better is to replace the take-home with a project that is done in the office during the onsite. Such a project still requires a logistical burden, but has the benefit of feeling like a symmetric exchange of time, particularly if it replaces multiple interview questions. The goal is to mimic the benefits the take-home has for candidates—let them work alone.

​ candidate ​ Understanding the reasons why a company might choose a take-home problem can help candidates prepare. This guide from Jane Phillips has a host of practical suggestions for tackling take-home coding challenges , along with an FAQ on common scenarios, like needing more time or what to do if you’re not familiar with a language or framework in the take-home problem.

Prior Work Assessment

Some companies choose to ask candidates for past work samples rather than asking them to write code (though you can do both). The nice thing about this approach is that it allows you to see something that the candidate actually did in a real-world setting. However, it can be difficult for many candidates to provide this kind of work sample if they don’t have an open-source presence, and evaluating these work samples may take more time and require a great deal of interviewer effort to evaluate. Prior work assessments can be:

Synchronous. The candidate walks the interviewer through a completed project or portfolio.

Asynchronous. The candidate sends work to the interviewer for them to review, and/or the interviewer reviews the candidate’s open-source projects (likely on GitHub).

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Sending an interview assignment: example email

This is an email template you can use when you want to send an assignment to your candidates as part of your hiring process. For some positions, especially technical roles, adding a written assignment or test will help you evaluate your candidates’ skills through a real work project and screen people who approach problems the best way.

Email subject line: Assignment for the [ Job_title ] position

Hi [ Candidate_Name ] / Dear [ Candidate_Name ],

Please find attached an assignment as part of our interview process. I’m also attaching some instructions to help you complete the assignment.

Keep in mind that there are no ‘right answers.’ This assignment is designed is to gauge your skills and give us an idea of how you approach tasks relevant to the [ Job_Title ] role. It would be great if you could send this over to us [ within X time frame or by Y date ].

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

Best of luck with the assignment,

[ Your name ] [ Signature ]

[When you receive the assignment]

Thank you for completing the assignment. Our team will review it and get back to you with feedback as soon as possible.

I hope you enjoy your day,

• Read about smart interview techniques to hire the right people.
• Read about common mistakes to avoid when interviewing top candidates .

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