take home assignment interview

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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With an expansive, connected network of the top IT, Tech, Creative, and Digital Marketing professionals and a proprietary process,  Mondo  can match you with the hard-to-find, specialized talent you need.

• Contact Mondo today for all your hiring needs
• Download our 2023 Salary Guide  for detailed salary breakdowns for roles & jobs across the technology, creative & digital marketing industries

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By Sarah Magazzo

Digital Marketing Manager for Mondo National Staffing Agency | AI Drafted & Human Crafted

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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.

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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).

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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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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How to Avoid Common Pitfalls and Ace Your Take Home Assignment

Jessica Wilkins

Published Jul 20, 2022

Updated Feb 13, 2023

This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may be relevant but please refer to the relevant official documentation or available resources for the latest information.

During the interview process, you might be asked to complete a short take home assignment. This usually consists of building out a small project with required tasks to be completed in a set time frame. This is a popular way to test an applicant's skills and assess how they can tackle problems. But what is the best way to approach a take home assignment and what are some common pitfalls people run into?

In this article, I will provide tips on how to ace your take home assignment and move to the next round of interviews. I will also provide tips on how to avoid common mistakes with the take home projects.

What does the take home project entail?

The take home project offers a chance for the prospective employer to see how you approach building out real world applications. For the frontend, you might be asked to work with an API and display some results in a table or card layout. You might also be asked duplicate a web page from a Figma design and add some functionality like search or pagination. For the backend, you will be tested on your knowledge of server side logic, and be asked to design some APIs.

There will be a list of criteria that you have to meet by a set deadline. There will also be notes on hosting your app and which libraries and frameworks you are allowed to use, if any.

If you want to see examples of take home projects, then please take a look at the following links:

• freeCodeCamp take home projects
• Github search results for take home projects

Make sure you understand the project requirements

Before you start building out the project, it is important that you understand all of the project requirements. If you need any clarifications, please ask and do not make assumptions. You don't want to fail a project because you misunderstand the directions.

This is also a good chance to see how well the company communicates project details to you. If they are able to offer up clear directions and answer any clarifying questions, that is a good indicator of what it will be like to work for them. If they are not able to provide clear directions and have poor communication skills, then that can also be a sign of what it would be like to work there.

Plan out your time efficiently

Time management is crucial when it comes to take home projects. Since you only have a short amount of time to build the project, it is important that you first plan out how to build the basic structure. You will need to identify which parts of the project will require the most attention and how long it will realistically take do each component of the project. It is important to account for the time it will take to fix bugs and other unexpected issues during the development phase.

Once you have mapped out how long it will take to build a basic prototype, you will need to look into adding extra features to help you stand out in the applicant pool. You will need to decide on which features to add and how long it will take to successfully build it out. Try not to fall into the trap of underestimating how long a feature will take to build. If it doesn't look feasible in your alloted time frame then it is best to rethink it or leave it out completely.

Make sure to adhere to best practices and focus on clean code

The goal of these projects, is to get a sense of your coding style and technical skill level. This is your chance to ensure that your work adheres to best practices and is clean and readable by other developers. You want to make sure that you are doing things like using clear concise variable and function names, adhering to the KISS and DRY principles, and optimizing your code so it runs efficiency.

Your potential employer is not looking for perfect code and understands that you are working under a time constraint. But they do want to get a sense of your code quality and the type of work you might contribute to a project. Do the best you can to write clean readable code while still making sure the basic functionality is in tact.

Avoid over engineering your project

Take home projects can offer a great opportunity to develop your skills and demonstrate what you can do. But it is important that you do not over engineer your application because it sends the wrong message to potential employers. There is no reason to over complicate your code and stuff you application with tons of extra unnecessary libraries and frameworks. Remember that employers will ask you about your code and technology decisions and if there doesn't seem to be a clear reason behind your decisions, then it can be seen as a negative.

Make sure to document your work

Documentation is an important part of any software project and you need to be able to demonstrate that in your take home assignment. Make sure to have a detailed readme including your architectural and design decisions, features of the application, testing, how to run the app locally, and a list of the technologies used. You can also include a section on features you would have liked to build if you had more time. By providing a documented project, employers will learn about your thought process and get a sense of how you approach problem solving.

Should you include testing in your take home project?

I think you should definitely include some testing in your take home assignment. During your planning stage, you will need to set aside some time for coming up with test cases and deciding on which testing tool you will use. If you are new to testing, try to include some small tests to communicate to your potential employer that you understand testing is part of the job. If you are a more experienced developer, your employers will expect you to include testing.

How should you approach styling?

Even if you are not a natural born designer, it is still important to create a clean professional looking design. It is fine if your design is simple because they are not testing you on your original design abilities. Just make sure that your project is responsive and has good UI/UX. If you are allowed to use CSS frameworks like Tailwind CSS or Bootstrap, then it will make designing your app a little bit easier.

How long should a take home project take?

Most companies will give you a timeline to complete the project and submit it. In my opinion, 3-5 days is a good range to complete the assignment. If the employer is expecting you to take a couple of weeks or more to do the assignment, then that is a sign they are not respecting your time. There have been a lot of stories of people spending 40-60+ hours on a take assignment and still not getting the job. If you receive an assignment where it is obvious it will take an excess amount of time to complete, then you might consider reassessing the situation and possibly not moving forward with the interview.

Take home projects can be a great alternative to the typical Leetcode style interviews. This is a chance for you to show off your technical skills amd build an app in the process. It is important that you meet all of the requirements and add some extra functionality to stand out in the applicant pool. Also make sure to document your solution and test out your project before submitting it.

I hope you enjoyed this article and best of luck on your future interviews

Jessica Wilkins is a classical musician turned Software Engineer. Prior to joining the tech industry, she spent her time running her own sheet music company (JDW Sheet Music) as well as performing and teaching in Los Angeles, CA. She enjoys working with React and TypeScript. She is also a prolific technical writer for freeCodeCamp.

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

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Jul 5, 2022

How to Handle Uploaded Images and Avoid Image Distortion

When you are working with images in your application, you might run into issues where the image's aspect ratio is different from the container's specified width and height. This could lead to images looking stretched and distorted. In this article, we will take a look at how to solve this problem by using the object-fit CSS property. A Look Into the Issue Using the "Let's Chat With" App Let's Chat With is an open source application that facilitates networking between attendees for virtual and in-person conferences. When users sign up for the app, they can join a conference and create a new profile with their name, image, and bio. When the team at This Dot Labs was testing the application, they noticed that some of the profile images were coming out distorted. The original uploaded source image did not have an aspect ratio of 1:1. A 1:1 aspect ratio refers to an image's width and height being the same. Since the image was not a square, it was not fitting well within the dimensions below. ` In order to fix this problem, the team decided to use the object-fit CSS property. What is the object-fit CSS property? The object-fit property is used to determine how an image or video should resize in order to fit inside its container. There are 5 main values you can use with the object-fit property. - object-fit: contain; - resizes the content to fit inside the container without cropping it - object-fit: cover; - ensures the all of the content covers the container and will crop if necessary - object-fit: fill; - fills the container with the content by stretching it and ignoring the aspect ratio. This could lead to image distortion. - object-fit: none; - does not resize the content which could lead to the content spilling out of the container - object-fit: scale-down; - scales larger content down to fit inside the container When the object-fit: cover; property was applied to the profile image in Let's Chat With, the image was no longer distorted. ` When Should You Consider Using the object-fit Property? There will be times where you will not be able to upload different sized images to fit different containers. You might be in a situation like Let's Chat With, where the user is uploading images to your application. In that case, you will need to apply a solution to ensure that the content appropriately resizes within the container without becoming distorted. Conclusion In this article, we learned about how to fix distorted uploaded images using the object-fit property. We examined the bug inside the Let's Chat With application and how that bug was solved using object-fit: cover;. We also talked about when you should consider using the object-fit property. If you want to check out the Let's Chat with app, you can signup here. If you are interested in contributing to the app, you can check out the GitHub repository....

Jul 28, 2023

Quick Guide to Playwright Fixtures: Enhancing Your Tests

Introduction Following our recent blog post on migrating E2E tests from Cypress to Playwright, we've identified opportunities to enhance our test scripts further. In this guide, we'll delve into the basics of Playwright fixtures, demonstrating their utility and flexibility in test environments. Playwright fixtures are reusable components that set up and tear down the environment or conditions necessary for tests. They are crucial for writing clean, maintainable, and scalable tests. Fixtures can handle tasks like opening a browser, initializing a database, or logging into an application—actions you might need before running your tests. As a practical example, we'll revisit one of the tests from our previous post, enhancing it with a new fixture to streamline the testing process and significantly improve maintainability. This post is designed to provide the foundational skills to integrate fixtures into your testing workflows effectively, giving you the confidence to manage and maintain your test scripts more efficiently. Creating Our First Fixture To illustrate the power of fixtures in Playwright, let’s consider a practical example from a test scenario in our project. Below is a snippet of a test case from our newsletter page: ` This test scenario navigates to the newsletter page, fills in an email, submits the form, and checks for a success message. To optimize our test suite, we'll refactor common actions like navigation, form completion, and submission into reusable fixtures. This approach makes our tests cleaner and more maintainable and reduces redundancy across similar test scenarios. Implementing the Fixture Here’s how the fixture looks: ` This fixture encapsulates the actions of navigating to the page, filling out the email field, and submitting the form. By abstracting these actions, we simplify and focus our test cases. Refactoring the Test With the fixture in place, let’s see how it changes our original test file: ` A beforeEach method to reset the state of the NewsletterPage fixture ensures a clean and consistent environment for each test scenario. This practice is crucial for maintaining the integrity and reliability of your tests. By leveraging the NewsletterPage fixture, each test within the "Newsletter page" suite starts with a clean and pre-configured environment. This setup improves test clarity and efficiency and aligns with best practices for scalable test architecture. Conclusion As we've seen, fixtures are powerful tools that help standardize test environments, reduce code redundancy, and ensure that each test operates in a clean state. By abstracting common setup and teardown tasks into fixtures, we can focus our testing efforts on what matters most, verifying the behavior and reliability of the software we're developing. Remember, the key to successful test management is choosing the right tools and using them wisely to create scalable, maintainable, and robust testing frameworks. Playwright fixtures offer a pathway towards achieving these goals, empowering teams to build better software faster and more confidently....

Jul 26, 2024

• INNOVATION FESTIVAL
• Capital One

03-08-2018 WORK LIFE

Got An Interview Assignment? Don’t Make These Six Common Mistakes

Sometimes a take-home project is part of the hiring process. Don’t blow it by making these preventable blunders.

[Photo: Rawpixel ]

BY  Stav Ziv and The Muse 6 minute read

Congratulations! You’ve reached the part of the hiring process where you’ll be judged on what you can actually do, rather than how well you talk about what you can do. It’s an interview assignment–some sort of task directly related to the role you covet (most of the time this is normal and legitimate , though it can be misused).

Granted, the assignment can’t always mirror exactly the kind of work you’d do if you got the job. But in most cases, it comes closer than sitting in a room in clothes you don’t usually wear with a stranger who might become your boss, explaining why you would be the best choice.

Think of this as your best chance to show off your skills. And along those same lines, you should think about all the mistakes other people make that you can easily avoid.

1. You Didn’t Follow Directions

In fifth grade, my teacher handed out a pop quiz. It contained a list of questions and instructions at the top that told us to read through the whole thing first. A note at the bottom of the page directed us not to answer anything, and instead to put our pencils down and wait to see how many of our classmates passed the test. I was the only one who did.

At the time, my success did little but cement my status as a full-fledged nerd (and, yes, earn me some brownie points with my teacher). But it was an important lesson for a bunch of 10-year-olds that job seekers would do well to remember.

Do what the assignment asks you to do, at the very least. Your potential bosses don’t want to hire someone who will do only half the job or a different job entirely. This is how you can show them they can count on you to get it done.

2. You Didn’t Ask Clarifying Questions Or Check Your Assumptions

It’s hard to follow directions if you don’t quite understand them. If you’ve made an honest effort to parse what’s being asked of you and it still doesn’t make sense–or you’re missing information that would allow you to drastically improve the quality of your assignment–reach out and ask!

For some roles, such as sales or client services, the hiring team is actually looking for you to ask questions as part of the process to demonstrate curiosity and communication skills.

The same goes for assumptions you make about the assignment or the company or product you’re discussing. To revert to some fifth-grade humor, remember that when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.

No one expects you to know the ins and outs of a company you haven’t yet joined, but try to identify whether you’ve made any fundamental assumptions. Would it make your assignment that much better if you know whether those are right or wrong? Ask!

Related: Exactly What To Do While You Hear Back About A Job

3. You Didn’t Show You Know The Company (At Least The Basics)

Chances are if you’ve gotten to this stage, you’ve made it through at least one previous round in the hiring process. And since you passed, you probably did some research about the company. Don’t forget that now!

Whether your assignment’s a writing test, a video-editing sample, a programming task, or a sample teaching lesson, make sure you understand and reflect what you can of the company’s values, style, and tone. You might get a style guide or an example to model your work after, and it never hurts to ask for one. You can also always do some research to glean what you can on your own.

I recently wrote a sample article about the best career advice I’ve ever received as part of my take-home project for this very job at The Muse. The recruiter didn’t send a template or specify a format, but I referred back to the website and built my story based on an intro-list-conclusion format I saw come up frequently (the same one I’m using for this article).

And it probably didn’t hurt (right, new boss?) that the tidbit I chose to write about–don’t be a jerk–was in line with The Muse’s no-assholes value , which appears on every job posting.

Related: How To Prepare For An Interview When The Job Is A Stretch

4. You Didn’t Do More Than The Bare Minimum

These assignments aren’t just about giving an answer, or even necessarily a right answer. They’re a chance for you to show how you think, how you approach problems, and how you could contribute to the company.

If the task, for example, is to say what you would change, think beyond minor tweaks to ideas that explore new possibilities you believe are in line with the company’s mission and goals and explain why. Or add a brief note that delves into what you would do next after implementing whatever suggestions you gave or to explain your thought process.

You could be completely wrong (because you’re not yet immersed in the industry or aware of all the context or past decisions), but it’s a chance to showcase your creativity and ability to take initiative.

5. You Didn’t Reread, Proofread, And Review The Details

You finished the assignment! Great, but you’re definitely not done.

If any part of it is written (like my edit test, title cards for your video sample, your lesson plan or handouts, your PowerPoint presentation, your code, or even the email you’re sending with your submission), spell-check it, fact-check it, and read it again with an eagle eye. Now set it aside for a couple hours, or overnight if the timeframe allows, and read it again (and use these proofreading tricks while you’re at it).

Related: A Big Reason Tech Candidates Don’t Get Job Offers? Weak Tech Skills

6. You’re Not Excited About the Role, The Company, Or Both–And It Shows

By this part of the hiring process, you should have a good sense of what the company does and the role you’re applying for. Try to take advantage of this opportunity to demonstrate your enthusiasm. In practice, you can do that by avoiding all the mistakes above; your efforts to turn in a stellar finished product show that you care.

When you send it back, include a message that reiterates your interest. Tell them how much you enjoyed the assignment, how it got you even more pumped about the role, and how much you’re looking forward to the next steps.

If you’ve reached this stage and realize you wouldn’t want the job under any circumstances or hate the company, it might be time to take yourself out of the running, politely. Save yourself, and the hiring team, some time.

Every part of the hiring process comes with its own challenges. While the assignment can often be done in your pajamas while sitting on the couch (unless it’s not a take-home assignment, don’t show up for a sample presentation in your robe!), it has pitfalls that are just as easy to avoid as these common interview mistakes .

One final tip (that should really go without saying): Make sure you submit your work on time!

This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission. 

More From The Muse:

• Is It Normal To Get A Job Interview Assignment?
• What Every Job Seeker Should Know About Work Assignments During The Interview Process
• Here’s What The Hiring Manager’s Looking For In That (Dreaded) Take Home Assignment

Apply to the Most Innovative Companies Awards and be recognized as an organization driving the world forward through innovation. Early-rate deadline: Friday, August 23.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stav Ziv  is a journalist based in New York City whose work has also appeared in The Forward, Dance Magazine, The Atlantic, and Newsday. She was previously a staff writer at Newsweek and the deputy editor overseeing careers and work coverage at The Muse   More

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Product Gym joins Elevate!

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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The Essential Guide to Take-home Coding Challenges

by Jane Philipps

Introduction

Hi, I’m Jane. I wrote this guide because I want to help others with non-traditional backgrounds succeed on take-home coding challenges. Please read it, take notes, apply the material, and let me know about your results. You can reach me via email at [email protected] .

This guide is intended for anyone who has received a take-home coding challenge as part of the technical interview process and wants to attack it in the best way. This Essential Guide is a distilled version of a longer Ultimate Guide to Take-home Coding Challenges , which goes into much more detail and walks through an example challenge from start to finish.

So, if you’ve just received a challenge and are anxious to get started, start here, and then check out the full guide when you want to learn the material more deeply. Good luck!

Mistakes to avoid making when working on a take-home coding challenge

There are several mistakes you can make with take-home challenges. Some of these are small mistakes that are easily correctable, while others will leave you frustrated and unable to finish your assignment. I want to address these mistakes first, so when you’re given a take-home challenge, you know exactly what not to do.

Here are four mistakes you can make:

1. Time management and scope creep

2. Trying to learn too many new things at once

3. Making too many assumptions

4. Starting to code right away

Let’s look at each one in detail.

Time estimation is one of the hardest problems in programming, and even experienced engineers struggle with it. This plays into take-home challenges in a couple of ways.

First, some challenges come with “estimated time.” I usually ignore these, as they are rarely based in reality. Second, some challenges are open-ended. Many people, especially newer developers, will want to add tons of features because they think it will be impressive. Actually, it’s more impressive if you keep the scope relatively narrow, but finish everything you set out to do. In this situation, it’s better to do one thing really well than to do a million things poorly.

A good question would be: what counts as “going above and beyond” versus what counts as “scope creep?” My rule of thumb would be if your idea accomplishes or improves on the requirements of the assignment, that is likely a good idea, but if it seems tangentially related or “just cool,” it’s probably scope creep. But, as I describe later, always make it work first.

While a take-home coding challenge can be an excellent opportunity for learning, it is possible to take on too much learning. If you’re given a challenge where you must use a specific language or framework, but you’re not familiar with it, don’t add additional complexity by setting out to learn something new on top of that. For example, if you are using a new backend framework for a full stack app, stick to a frontend framework that you’re already comfortable with.

If your challenge is language/framework agnostic, but you’ve been itching to try out some new technology, pick JUST ONE to experiment with. Between reading the docs, getting your challenge properly set up, and getting used to any new syntax, you will have your hands full. Even learning one thing will eat up a lot of your time, so I would highly suggest limiting yourself to one new piece of technology per challenge.

As a developer, if you make too many assumptions, you are bound to build an application where the requirements are off, or the user experience is bad. When given a set of requirements for a take-home challenge, ALWAYS take the time to review the requirements and make sure you fully understand them. And, if you have any questions at all, always ask.

First, this shows that you are willing to ask for help when you don’t quite understand something, an important trait for a developer to demonstrate. Second, many companies will intentionally give you product requirements that are vague or not fully fleshed out in order to see how you react in these situations. They are actually testing your ability to make sense of requirements that may have gaps in them.

So, when in doubt, ask questions. Asking questions is also a signal that you are engaged and interested in the challenge.

One last mistake you can make is to jump in and start coding right away. I guarantee if you do this, you will regret it. Why? Two reasons:

Without proper planning, your code will suffer

Without first getting organized and making sure you fully understand ALL of the technical requirements, you may find yourself missing edge cases or rewriting parts of the functionality. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but you will actually SAVE yourself time if you plan ahead.

You will spin your wheels trying to get your app set up properly

Especially for newer developers, initial app setup can be one of the hardest parts of a take-home coding challenge. It’s not something you do every day, so it often takes some research and reading documentation to get reacquainted with the process and ensure you’re going about it in the best way.

So, there you have it — a summary of mistakes to avoid making. You’ll find that a lot of these are also applicable to your day to day work as a developer. In the next section, we’ll dive into further detail on how to get organized before you write a single line of code.

Get organized: how to plan before you write a line of code

Now it’s time to get to work! But, it’s NOT time to write any code YET.

Because, as you’ll see, a lot of the work actually happens before you write a single line of code. This may seem counterintuitive, but again — the more time you spend up front planning, the less time you will spend writing code.

So, now you have your coding challenge in hand and you are ready to get started with the planning process. Here are my six suggested steps:

1. Understand the requirements and ask any questions

2. Identify technical decisions you need to make

3. Technical design & whiteboarding

4. Test plan

5. App setup plan

6. Organize your tasks

First, you need to make sure you completely, absolutely, 100% understand the requirements of the project. If any part of the requirements are unclear, it is up to you to reach out to your contact and ask questions.

Sometimes companies will purposefully make their requirements vague, in order to see how you approach the problem. In these cases, it is always best to ask questions as it shows you are thinking about the problem and not just making assumptions and building an app to a vague spec.

Your next step will be to identify the technical decisions that you need to make. Making a list of all of your technical decisions up front and thinking about them before you’re in the middle of building your app will help you immensely. Not only will it cut down on time figuring things out later, but it will allow you to make big picture decisions up front, as opposed to trying to focus on both the big picture and the small details at the same time.

Now it’s time to plan out the rest of your app. For anything that you need to draw out, now is the perfect time to do that. Thinking through these decisions at the start serves two purposes:

• You’ll be able to reference these drawings and your original plan while you’re building your app. Then if you get stuck at any point, you can always come back to your notes.
• Later, when you are having a discussion with an engineer about your coding challenge, you can use these notes as a reference when they ask you why you made certain design or architecture decisions.

Once you’ve thought through and answered some of the bigger design and architecture questions for your challenge, the next step is research. If you’re planning to use a new technology or something you’re a bit rusty with, use this time to search for documentation and other resources.

Another very important step to take before writing a line of code is developing a test plan. Although you won’t get peer feedback on this test plan, it will help you look at the challenge from a different angle, making sure you’re meeting all of the requirements. By thinking through and writing out a test plan before you start coding, you are able to brainstorm possible edge cases that you should account for in your code and you will use this as a basis for testing your app later.

If you’re starting an app from scratch, figure out if there are any generators you can use to make your app setup easier and faster. Application setup is one of the hardest parts of take-home coding challenges, because it’s something that developers do rather infrequently. Best practices are always changing, so it’s easy to forget how to do. Also, when setting up an app with a specific combination of technologies for the first time, it can be challenging to get everything configured and working together properly.

If you are not using a generator, reading documentation and finding working examples are the two most important steps you can take. Being able to play with a working example and compare it to your own app will help you if you get stuck.

The last step before you start coding is to break down and organize your tasks. Breaking down your tasks is essential because it will help you stay on track as you’re working on your challenge, and it will give you a game plan for execution. Note that you shouldn’t be a perfectionist here, because there will always be unexpected bumps in the road.

Here is an example task list for a classic Tic Tac Toe app:

Some of these tasks can be broken down even further into smaller steps. For example, in order to implement the Tic Tac Toe gameplay with Javascript, here are some smaller tasks:

3. Writing tests: just do it!

Testing can be overwhelming, because there are so many different types of tests: acceptance tests, integration tests, and unit tests, not to mention test driven development vs. ad hoc testing.

Why should you include tests in your take-home coding challenge? It’s simple: your tests will make your submission shine.

First, adding tests shows that you know or are willing to learn another technology/framework. It also demonstrates that you take ownership of what you’re building, because you are taking responsibility to make sure it works. Testing also shows that you’ve considered edge cases, which many newer engineers often overlook.

Many companies take tests very seriously. Some will not tell you that they expect tests for your coding challenge, but will automatically reject you if you leave them out. Therefore, my recommendation is to write tests no matter what when given a take-home challenge. Not only will it make you a better developer, but for companies that were not expecting tests, you will stand out even more!

How do you go about writing a tests? First, create a plan. Here’s my 80/20 suggestion for how to come up with the right test cases:

1. Test the happy path

For the classic Tic Tac Toe example, the happy path is starting with an empty board and playing a game until X wins.

2. Think about variations on the happy path

A variation on the happy path would be if O wins, or if there is a tie game.

3. Think of edge cases

An edge case would be if a player tries to play a move in the same square more than once.

4. Test anything that is complex

The algorithm to find the winner is the most complex part of this example.

Here’s a sample test plan:

So, now it’s your turn. Think about your app and, as a baseline, think of 5–10 tests that you can write.

4. Make it work, then make it pretty, then make it fast

The title of this section sums it up pretty well, but when you’re working on building out your challenge, you should follow these 3 steps IN THIS ORDER:

1. Make it work

2. Make it pretty

3. Make it fast

When you’re given a take-home coding challenge, no matter what you do, the most crucial part of the challenge is to make it work. If you submit an app that has a nice UI, that will not matter if your app does not work or meet all of the requirements. Because building features to spec is a key aspect of your future job as a developer, you first and foremost need to focus on the functionality of your app and prioritize that above all else.

This is also key if you are low on or run out of time. Coding challenges can be a lot of work, especially if you want to go above and beyond to ensure that you make it to the next interview round. But, I can guarantee that you will not make it to the next round if your app doesn’t function properly or is missing some key components.

So, if you’re building a front-end app, this means focusing on making it work first, and styling/UI last. If you are building a back-end or full-stack app, focus on making it work before trying to refactor your code into the most elegant solution, and only then worry about optimization.

Even if you end up without any time to go back and refactor your code or style your UI, having a working app to present is more important. You can always talk to the interviewer about how you would improve your app, and refactoring some of your code might even be part of the next round of interviewing.

Make it pretty has two interpretations here. One is making the code pretty, and the other is making the UI pretty. Making the code pretty can be done in several ways. First, ensure indentation is consistent and your code is readable. Second, if you got something to work in a quick, hacky way, think about how you can refactor it to be a more elegant solution without overcomplicating it.

If you’re doing a front-end or full-stack challenge, you can also make the UI pretty as part of this step. Whether you use a library or write your own custom styles for your app, making the UI look good will show your interviewer that you’re taking the user experience into consideration when building a feature.

For some more front-end-focused challenges, you’ll be given a specific mockup to match. In these cases, making sure you’re detail oriented down to the last pixel is incredibly important. Part of your role may involve translating mockups from designers into user interfaces, so companies want to get a sense of how you approach those types of tasks.

Once you’ve made your app work, made it pretty (in the code, UI, or both), it may be time to make it fast! This is where understanding performance and BigO notation comes in handy.

You should take a look at your code and see if there are any areas where increasing the scale might be an issue. For example, are you using a double for loop somewhere? What if the arrays you’re looping over become super long?

If you think about these kinds of edge cases, you can then come up with plan to improve your code. Taking something that would have been running O(n) and making it O(1) will show that you’re thinking about performance when you’re building things.

How to make your code shine

When given a take-home coding challenge, many people think about how to build an app that works, but stop there. In this section, I’ll go over things an engineer reviewing your code will look for, so you can take your challenge to the next level and make your code shine.

When an engineer is reviewing your code, they will look for several different things. They will likely try to run your app to play around with it and see it working. After that, they will delve into the actual code, looking to see how you organized your app architecture and reading code in individual files.

There are several things you can do to make your code stand out. You want your code to be:

• Easy to follow
• Well organized
• Clean (properly indented, free of syntax errors and unnecessary whitespace)

These are the basics that don’t take much effort outside of mindfulness to get right. Now let’s talk about three of the more involved code style considerations:

1. How to name things

2. How to use comments effectively

3. How to format your code as you write it

Naming is one of the hardest problems in programming. One of the keys to naming things is to make sure you’re naming them in a way that another developer who is unfamiliar with the code can easily jump in and understand.

For functions, think about what exactly the function is doing. Is the function checking whether there is a winner on a row of a Tic Tac Toe board? Then a great name would be checkRow . Is your function handling a click on a square of the Tic Tac Toe board? Then a great name would be handleClick .

One quick tip: if you find yourself losing your flow because you keep stopping to think of the perfect name, split your process into two steps. First, write working code with any names (like foo , bar , and baz ). Then take a second pass through to improve them.

Adding comments can be a great way to capture what you were thinking at the time you wrote a specific piece of code. This can be useful to you, or anyone else who comes across your code in the future and needs to understand it, tweak it, or rewrite it.

Think of comments as adding clarity to your code. But, pay attention, because there is such a thing as too many comments.

Here is where you most likely do not need comments:

• When you declare a variable
• When you declare a function

Don’t do this:

The variable or function name should be enough to explain exactly what it does. If you need a comment to explain it, then you need to give it a better name!

Here are some examples of where comments can be useful:

• Technically tricky lines of code

First, let’s talk about HTML. Markup seems pretty self-explanatory, right? So, why would you need comments? Let’s say you have a really long HTML file with A LOT of <d iv>s. Comments can be a good way to signal which </div> tags close which sections.

In CSS, comments are a good way to divide up your styles if you have a lot of styles in one file. This way, when you come back to the code later and want to make a change, it’s easier to find the styles for that one section you need to update.

Comments in CSS are also very useful whenever you are hard-coding any math or adding an arbitrary number of pixels as margin, padding, and so on. Comments can be useful to explain things like this that are specific to your application.

One of the best uses for comments is when you’ve written code that is technically difficult or just not intuitive. You should always strive for simple, understandable code as much as possible. However, sometimes you will have confusing code — maybe you’ve chained a bunch of methods together or are using a complex regular expression — and it would help to explain what is happening in a comment.

You are almost done learning how to make your code shine! Just one more step.

I’m a STICKLER about formatting when it comes to code. And, it’s not just me. You’ll find that the best engineers also care about well-formatted, clean code. Why? First, it’s much easier to read! Coding can be really challenging, so when code is easier to read, it makes our jobs as developers that much easier. Also, writing clean code sends a message to your interviewers that you take pride in the craft of writing code, and for many teams, this is a big deal.

So, how do you make sure the code style sticklers will approve of your code? There are a few simple tricks you can use as you’re working through your coding challenge to ensure the end result comes out clean and you don’t have to spend time at the end reformatting everything.

• Choose tabs or spaces and be consistent across your entire application (i.e. no 2 spaces in some files, 4 spaces in others)
• Indent your code properly as you go so that it stays readable and isn’t all over the place
• Get rid of trailing whitespace! Whitespace can sometimes wreck havoc, so it’s best to just get rid of it as you write your code.
• Keep your syntax consistent throughout your entire app. If you’re using a linter, this will be easier, but requires setting one up. If you don’t have time to set one up, pay attention. Don’t use ES5 in some places in your app and ES6 in others. Pick one and stick with it!
• Remove unnecessary logging and debug statements when you’re done using them! Unless logging is part of your application, you’ll want to remove any temporary statements you were using while building your app.
• Always leave a newline at the end of every file

That’s it! It’s pretty simple, and once you’re in the habit of doing this, not only will your code be easier for you to read, but it will also be easier for others to read and maintain. Many new developers haven’t been exposed to very much code maintenance, but trust me, when you have to clean up code someone else has written, you will be more thankful if it was neatly organized to start. Pay it forward!

Here’s an example of badly formatted code:

Here’s an example of the same code, but cleanly formatted and MUCH more readable:

How to take your challenge to the next level

Here are 3 ideas for how you can take your coding challenge to the next level:

2. UI/UX design (for front-end or full-stack challenges)

3. Data validation and error handling

Not all coding challenges come with bonuses, but if yours does and your goal is to get a job offer, do them! Why? It’s pretty simple. If you go above and beyond in your coding challenge, it will show that you will go above and beyond once you’re hired at this company. Completing bonus requirements is a high competence trigger for the interviewer.

Some front-end or full-stack challenges will mention UI/UX design as a bonus, but if they don’t, putting in some effort to make the UI look nice and be easy to use will go a long way. You can either go the route of adding your own custom CSS or plugging in a library or two to help make your styling even more painless. If you use a library, just make sure that you understand how it works enough to explain how you’ve used it.

Data validation and error handling are key components in production apps. Adding either one of these (or both!) to your challenge will help make it stand out. Many developers who are new to coding and haven’t worked in a production codebase before don’t have a ton of exposure to either of these, so if you add error handling for edge cases it will show that you thought through a lot of different situations.

How to write an awesome README

You may be done writing code, but you’re not done writing yet — it’s time to write your README.

Why you should include a README

READMEs are incredibly important, both for professional developers and for job seekers working on take-home challenges. Including a README shows that you care about documentation.

Documentation helps spread knowledge across teams and serves as a supplement to your code. Having documentation for your take-home challenge ensures that anyone else (or future you) can jump into your code with a clear understanding of what you’ve built without any guessing games.

Your README is also the KEY to making sure that everyone reviewing your challenge has the most painless experience possible. Finally, your README is a way of proving to your reviewer that you successfully met the requirements of the challenge.

How to write your README

Writing a great README is not hard, and you will stand out a great deal from the other applicants with one. Here are the five sections I’d recommend you include:

1. Installation instructions

2. Discussion of technologies used

3. A section demonstrating that you met the requirements

4. If there are bonuses, a section demonstrating that you met them

5. For algorithms and data structures, time and space complexity

When writing your README, don’t make any assumptions. Write out all of the steps to run your app locally and test them yourself. This includes cloning the repo from Github, running installation commands, and starting up a server. Also, make sure to include versions of software that you are using. This will ensure that the developer reviewing your code has a seamless experience setting up and running your app, and if they do happen to run into any trouble due to versioning, they will have all of the information they need right there in the README.

This section is as simple as it sounds — make a list of all of the technologies you used including frameworks and libraries. If you had to find a library for a specific piece of functionality in your take-home challenge, mention it here and include a link to the docs.

Usually your take-home challenge will come with some sort of requirements spec, so make sure to include a section in your README where you describe the requirements and how you met them. In some cases, you can take the product spec you were given and write a short explanation of how you met each requirement in a list. In other cases, you can simply include a short paragraph explaining how you satisfied the requirements. It’s totally up to you how you do it, just make sure you include it.

Similar to the requirements section above, you’ll want to highlight any bonuses you completed while working on the take-home challenge. If you attempted a bonus, but couldn’t quite get something to work, then the README is also a good place to address that. You can discuss the approach or approaches you tried and what worked or didn’t work.

If you had to write any algorithms or data structures as part of your take-home challenge, it’s helpful to include the space-time complexity of your final algorithm. This can be done in Big O notation.

One final word of advice: write your README in markdown so it looks nice! This will demonstrate that you know (or are willing to learn) another language that will come in handy as a full-time developer.

Here is an example README for a Tic Tac Toe app:

Final steps before you hit send

Now that you’ve written your README, you’re almost ready to hit send! Before you do that, take the time to double check all of your work using the following checklist:

• Re-read the take-home challenge instructions to make sure you didn’t miss any requirements
• Review your app’s code to ensure that it shines
• Run your app’s automated tests and make sure they are all passing
• Test your app manually and make sure everything is working properly
• Test your app installation instructions from your README
• Start an email draft and copy your README into it for convenience
• If requested, make sure to attach a zip file of your code
• Write an email to your contact at the company

Your email can be short and sweet — I always like to highlight something I enjoyed about the challenge or something I learned. Here’s an example:

Note that you should only mention interviewing with other companies or offer deadlines if either is actually the case. I feel you should be honest and candid about your situation and maintain leverage for a potential future compensation negotiation at the same time.

Now, finally, hit send!

I hope this Essential Guide was helpful and you learned something that you can apply to a take-home challenge or in your day-to-day work. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can reach me at [email protected] .

Also, if you enjoyed this guide and want to learn more, feel free to sign up for my email list:

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Given a 'homework' tasks on a job interview?

Recently I went to some interviews and on many I've had the 'some small projects' to do for homework. Usually in the small companies I see this as a practice.

It is not such a problem, but I've collected several projects and when I ask for a feedback it appears that the task grows with some extra requirements that are really time-consuming. Moreover I see the employers are not willing to help or to evaluate it with care. Should this be a red flag for the interview or the company?

Edit: Thank you for all your responses. You covered almost all the aspects of my question. As a conclusion I think the only task for homework that worth doing it is:

when the company is decent enough and you want to work there eagerly

the task is not supposed to take more than one day to complete

In the other cases I would apply somewhere else.

• interviewing

• 2 As an interviewer I've always wanted to see the candidate actually write code. No assignment will be as complex as the actual work, so I want to watch you work. I'm inclined to see the take-home as an attempt to apply this to a bulk lot of applicants in the hope that none will cheat. It's a bad sign. Unfortunately this practice seems to be getting more common, so ruling out companies just for running with the herd really cuts out a lot of possible paychecks. The flip side is they're likely just expect you to turn up and fit in, rather than thinking too hard. –  Móż Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 2:09
• I know this is really old, but another reason for adding extra requirements is to see how well your initial design was to see if it was well thought out and extendable. If it wasn't then you suffer. It it was, great. Then they have the 2 versions of your work and see what work you had to do to acquire the extra requirements. Possibly in their work place, requirements are always changing or the work place is high paced and they want to know if you will be able to adapt. –  TheOneWhoPrograms Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 11:54

7 Answers 7

As an interviewer, I face a number of challenges. If I just ask you about coding, I can rule out people who really don't know what they're talking about, but I might accidentally hire someone who "talks a good game" but writes horrible code - hard to read, insecure, bug-ridden, inefficient - or who is very slow, or who is rude to co-workers, or much more. So I ask you questions that aren't just about code, in the hopes I can learn enough about you to avoid a bad hire, but that isn't always enough either.

Some companies set coding problems in the interview, either on a whiteboard or at a computer. These are really expensive for the company because they add 30 or 60 minutes to the interview in many cases. A good programmer might do a bad job at these (so we recommend practicing for them) and a bad interviewer might misinterpret what happens during them.

As a result some companies think they will save money and time by giving you a sort of "take home test". They don't typically ask you to write something they want to sell, it's a way to see what you can do. Often it's a problem that was solved already so they can compare your solution to someone else's. There's still the risk that someone might help you do it, or you might spend far longer on it than you say, but they see it as a cheaper way to screen people. If you want the job, you'll invest the time in being screened, and if it's not worth it to do that, just decline the opportunity. This happens in other industries: cooks are sometimes asked to work unpaid in the kitchen for a day so their speed and technique can be evaluated, artists are asked to bring a portfolio which often includes works they created without being paid to do so, performers must audition - give an unpaid performance - and often spend time learning music, lines, or steps in order to do so, and so on.

I have heard people suggest that somehow they are not so much interviewing as doing free project work. That companies are asking for a day or two of work, then when it's submitted asking for another day or two of work, all while dangling a job offer in front of them. If this is happening to you, one of two situations exist:

• you need a day or two for something that the ideal candidate would need only an hour to do, and they are screening hard to make sure they get that candidate
• you are misunderstanding what they ask of you and doing much more than they wanted, so that either you or they have huge communication shortfalls
• they are exploiting job applicants to get their web site built or some other small task done cheaply

The good news is, it doesn't matter which of these are true - you just don't want to continue applying for this job. You don't want to work for the place whose web site was glued together from samples provided by applicants of varying quality, or who doesn't mind exploiting vulnerable or desperate people, you don't want to work with a company that cannot explain its needs to you, and you won't get to work at the place where you need to be much faster or better than you are now. So thank them and decline to go further into the process.

• Definitely agree that sitting with candidates and watching them code is time-consuming, but it's incredibly effective. And only rarely does a candidate I'm doubtful about turn out to be a competent coder, so over time I've got more vigorous about cutting that session short. I can't see how letting them go away and work on it would help that process, what I want to see is how they approach the problem. –  Móż Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 2:12
• No argument from me. I don't do take home screeners pre interview and I do whiteboard tests in interviews. Just explaining the possible thought processes of those who give take homes. –  Kate Gregory Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 2:13
• Yes. I'd love to hear from someone who does give take home tests. –  Móż Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 3:12
• The do homework can be useful for far away candidates. Not all candidate can afford it. In this case, it's a good compromise I think –  dyesdyes Commented Jan 31, 2014 at 17:33

I've never liked project-based interviews. I've done several and I have several public ones on my GitHub. Very rarely do they ever consider my previous work. Nowadays, it seems everyone wants to give their own test. However, not all employers respond to them. In the field of Android development, these apps take many hours. I've done some apps that took me five hours to do and was rejected without any feedback. Especially troubling are the companies that give them out without even having a phone conversation with them first. Who knows if that company is interested in them? You could work for hours for nothing.

So, no I don't do project-based interviews for people who I haven't talked to yet and ones that are seemingly long.

• 1 Most annoying are the companies that insist on giving you their own tests, and then in the face-to-face interview, can't make any commentary on your submission (often admitting they didn't read it). –  Edwin Buck Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 23:16

A homework exam is good news.

If you are given a homework assignment that you actually do correctly, you are almost certain to get the job. Very few employers will interview you, decide you are good enough to do the take-home, see that you did very well on it, and not hire you.

Almost every homework assignment I have been given has lead to a job offer. Moreover, you should enjoy doing them... if you don't, why are you applying for this particular job?

I don't find this exploitative. Most of the time, employers will give you a sample test that has no relevance to their business. And even if they were open to having unwitting applicants do their own work as part of an interview, would you really trust someone you've only just met, whose competence is still in question, with your business?

• Have you ever been asked to do additional work on one of these take home tasks? Seems like a red flag if they do. –  user8365 Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 13:58
• Personally, in every case I've done a homework assignment, they just call me up and offer me the job a few days later. Rarely is the content of the work even discussed. –  Code Whisperer Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 18:18
• 7 @itcouldevenbeaboat, really? I've done a couple of these and never heard a word back. I was annoyed that I'd wasted my time. I guess it depends on the company. –  Jeremy Stein Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 0:17
• @itcouldevenbeaboat, the alternate explanation is that I did a bad job. I guess you have to take my word for it that they were good answers. I was a 4.0 student in college and I work for a famously-selective company now as a developer. I felt like I gave solid submissions, but who knows! –  Jeremy Stein Commented Jan 30, 2014 at 19:00
• 3 I respectfully decline it without being paid per hour. At most I would be willing to come up with the main points of algorithm and describe it in a short paragraph of for a few minutes on the phone. If they want at least 4 hours to be spent on assessing my candidacy, I prefer it to be their 4 hours perusing one of my always-non-trivial GitHub projects. That's why I've put these projects there. If a company would not hire Alan Turing because he would not take the initial coding test, then I know I should not waste my time there. Yes, it's often an initial assignment, before even a phone call. –  rapt Commented Mar 17, 2018 at 17:56

I've had to deal with this. One measure I've had to use is to make sure that whatever the 'homework' is, it has to be something generic. If it's specific enough for the company to actually benefit from (as in -- take your work and make a buck from it without hiring you), that's a red flag.

There'd be nothing wrong with sharing your proximate approach to dealing with a challenge they present to do. But when it comes down to nuts-and-bolts details, remember that the whole reason that you showed up in the first place is so that you can get paid for your expertise.

The tact some companies take would be like you taking your car into the local mechanic and having them do an exam before you agree to pay for them to fix the car. It's stupid.

• Well, I don't mind to show my skills but in 2 hours should be enough. –  Bor Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 19:43
• For me it's not a question of demonstrating my skills. I can do that on paper, or by verbal question-and-answer. I just have a problem with solving a company's issue in the interview -- why should they pay someone who's dumb enough to give all the answers for free? –  Xavier J Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 19:46
• @codenoire if you really think they don't know the answers, and want yours for their revenue potential, don't work for them. But the chances of that are tiny. I would not run my business using code or other project output from people who wanted to work for me, and I doubt others would either. They want to know how good you are, that's all. –  Kate Gregory Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 15:49
• @Kate I'm a consultant and accordingly I am interviewing sometimes 2-3 times a year as a matter of course. This has actually happened to me a couple of times, but I got wise real quick. The first time (long ago), I'd driven about 80 miles to meet with a potential client and I didn't occur to me until I got home that the 'exam' i did was actually the crux of the technology the company was trying to implement. What's the saying... fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on ME... right? :) –  Xavier J Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 16:36
• Your last comment is a bit of an empty argument, it is more analogous to the local mechanic shop having a mechanic come into the shop and work for a day to assess his knowledge and technique. Of course, such a mechanic would be paid for his day of work. Perhaps these companies should pay a day's wages for these take home assignments? –  daaxix Commented Feb 19, 2015 at 3:37

Some homework assignments could be seen as a red flag, others not. It all depends on the type of assignment and how it is framed.

I give a homework assignment to all developer candidates who pass through the phone screen (the phone screen is with me, after carefully scrutinizing your resume and anything else I can find about you , and it's 30-40 minutes of 3 - 5 general questions about methodology, preferences, and general development practices), and that homework assignment was written by the entire development team to represent what they want to test in a candidate. Because the homework assignment will take a person a few hours to perform, and takes each member of our team an hour or so to assess, we only give the assignment to candidates who we think have the opportunity to do well on it. We don't want to waste anyone's time, ours included.

If the homework problem you are given is one that you think will take you 10 hours to complete, you can ask the company how long they think it will take to complete. If they say "10 hours" then pat yourself on the back for estimating correctly, but then wonder why they're giving you a 10 hour test -- is it work they want done and are using homework problems to get work for free? Are they just really rigorous, and this homework assignment is much like the 8 hour/all-day interviews higher level candidates in management, architecture, etc perform (I've done these a lot, for many different senior roles)?

In other words, some companies will use the homework assignment poorly, some not. It's a judgement call on whether it raises a red flag for you , but remember that it is quite common to put in some amount of time to prepare for and then execute on an interview process. In companies where I have been a hiring manager, a developer candidate could expect probably 5 hours of total interview time in three stages over a couple weeks, and a homework problem that might take another 2 to 3 hours. That's 8 hours of effort for a $100K/year job, which seems pretty reasonable to me (which is why I continue to do it).

For me and my teams, how you perform on the homework problem leads directly to what the team will talk about in their couple hours of interview -- why did you select the gems or libraries you did, what was your testing approach, what did you or did you not document in your work and why, and so on. You could always ask the company who gives the assignment to you how they plan to use it, so you can better understand the context. If they don't give you a good answer, like "we'll use this as an evaluation of basic skills in xyz, and use it as the foundation of discussion in your second round of interviews," then that could be a red flag.

• I've been given tasks different tasks - some are just 2-3 hours, other are at least a whole day and some are supposed to be easy but when you add the time to understand X technology it is still the second type task. –  Bor Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 16:56
• 1 @Bor On the latter, if it's testing technology that the company expects a developer to use, and you don't know it (and you apply anyway), that's really not the company giving a candidate a lengthy task, it's the candidate having to beef up their own knowledge in order to match the job requirements. –  jcmeloni Commented Jan 29, 2014 at 17:06

This is a sign of trouble ahead.

The companies which are doing this are testing you to see how willing you are to use your personal time for their projects. A person who states that they are uncertain about or unwilling to do so will almost certainly be removed from their potential list of candidates.

It's also rather legally tricky for the company, as if they assign you a task and you accidentally develop something which they later attempt to sell, since you are neither a contractor nor an employee, they could owe you compensation for your efforts

Also this could cause practical problems for them if you far exceed their expectations (and they may this apparent), this may change the compensation rates you are seeking to levels beyond what they are willing to pay for the position.

It would advisable to make certain exactly what they are seeking when they ask you to take a project before you accept this and what assistance (if any) that they will provide to perform this task. If they balk at this or they make it clear that you are expected to work for an extended period without compensation, then it's probably best to politely decline to do this.

Frankly, unless the companies are "industry leaders" or what they are doing is cutting edge, it might be advisable to continue to look for a company which respects your work/life balance.

• 1 It would depend upon how long it would take. If it is clear that you are being used, then it would be advisable to politely decline. If they expect you to spend more than a reasonable amount of time on their "test" (reasonable being less than 1 hour) then it also might not be advisable. –  Mistah Mix Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 14:20
• 3 sounds like a bunch of unfounded paranoia about a little coding exercise whose typical intent is to check whether the candidate actually knows how to code, knows basic concepts (like concurrency or data structures), and has a habit of writing well structured and commented code. –  amphibient Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 17:39
• 3 My time is valuable. I have no idea how (or even if) you value yours. Unless there's a strong possibility that I'm going to get the job, then in my assessment it's a waste of time that might be spent elsewhere. –  Mistah Mix Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 17:46
• 5 if your time is so "valuable" that you don't want to use a few of its hours to complete a coding assignment as often the last step before getting a job, i would not hire you. Is your time also too valuable to shower, shave and dress up before an interview? Sheesh, it'd be nice if jobs just came on a silver platter... –  amphibient Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 20:49
• 2 I've always felt more suspicious about interviews where you don't do a technical test. How on earth can they tell the level of technical competence by just talking? Soft skills yeah, but a technical test requires a sufficiently complex and small task to accurately prove skill or learning capacity. Otherwise it will look bad on both - perhaps the candidate overestimated his skill, or the employer underestimated the difficulty of the job. –  Juha Untinen Commented Aug 26, 2014 at 8:10

Few times I have received quite serious "mini projects" to do that took me almost all day to complete. These projects produced small applications that are directly useful as utilities or library functions. The produced code worked well, and I used to be deeply surprised when the companies refused the next round without much explaining.

Could it be an easy way to get a free day of attention from the professional? You need a task to be done, you post a job proposal for a job you never think to offer, you put the high salary proposal and send a "small home assignment" for every applicant. Then all you need to do is to pick between even multiple versions of the code that does that you need, maybe some really ugly but others may actually be really good, various people are looking for a job. That a great idea to grow your business productivity!

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Is It Normal to Get a Job Interview Assignment?

Applying for jobs takes a lot of time—to network, research companies,browse job postings, pull together your materials, prepare for interviews, and follow up. And then there’s also the mental aspect of psyching yourself up before each stage and then waiting to hear back .

Which is why you’re not all that excited when the hiring manager asks if you could complete a take-home assignment as well. It feels like a lot to invest even more time and effort into a job that you haven’t even landed yet.

But before you see it as just one more hoop to jump through, you should know that it’s not just for the company’s benefit. It helps you, too.

How Interview Assignments Help You

As an applicant, two of your biggest concerns are showing you can do the job, and beating out the competition. A take-home assignment gives you the opportunity to do both.

The hiring manager’s picked a task to weed out anyone who exaggerated on their application . So, think of this as an opportunity for you strut your stuff.

Anyone can say they’re detail-oriented, or that they think outside the box, or that they know how to code, but an interview assignment gives you the chance to demonstrate it. It really is worth taking your time to show that you’re (literally) up to the task. Turning in a perfect edit test or some ideas for how you’d take an initiative in a fresh direction can be just the thing to distinguish you from other candidates.

Additionally, these tests are reflective of the kinds of projects you could expect in your new role. So, if it’s incredibly hard, you have to get a mentor’s help, and it takes you all weekend to complete something you feel good about, it could be an indication that this role isn't going to be the best fit on your end—which is a valuable lesson for you to learn before you sign on.

Unfortunately, not every assignment is above board. I should know: I got tasked with a major project to have my work stolen .

This misuse of the interview assignment is not normal, but it does happen. So, don’t ignore a gut feeling you’re being asked to work for free. One thing you can do if you think you’re being taken advantage of is to ask someone in the field whether this seems like a reasonable task. (You can also follow these strategies to protect your ideas.)

More often than not though, this assignment is there to confirm you really could do the job. So, take it as the opportunity it is, and hit it out the park.

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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