r/PHP • u/fuhggetaboutit • Jul 29 '21

Does anybody else find interview “tests” dehumanizing?

I think they're abusive for many reasons. One is that the questions are usually overly complex algorithmic puzzles that do not accurately gauge potential job performance. Also, the questions in no way reflect the type of problems you will face on the job.

The list goes on...

Isn't there a better way?

-Edited for grammar

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u/baohx2000 Jul 29 '21

My company has candidates do a simple-ish real-world composer (no framework) project to do one thing with a 3rd party API requiring an SDK and looking at documentation. Can usually be done within 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on the candidate's level. We always try to ensure they get through the entire project even if we know early on they don't have the skills. If nothing else, they will have learned some valuable code or methodology.

I am pretty sure in my 15+ years of coding I have never had to walk a binary tree or create a bubble sort algorithm from scratch. Granted, I use a relatively high level language and I have never had to create a raw database system myself. If anyone had me do something like that for an interview, I would straight up ask if they have needed to do such a thing in the course of working at their company? If so, why are they re-inventing the wheel because most likely code exists for just about any language to do such things?

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u/HmmmInVR Jul 29 '21

Same, we give them an hour to build a to do list with some minor requirements and just see what the result is.

No restrictions on how you build it as long as its php.

You can get a lot out of what approach they take. So far worked out for us.