Monday, July 05, 2010

Its more than your job's worth!

Recently I've been tasked with recruiting my replacement for my current employer. My worry is that the team will end up with someone who is just there to pick up a pay-cheque or a bumbling incompetent (yes another one, v funny).  As the position is to lead and support an ASP.Net WebForms app I wanted to test the candidate's ability in ASP.Net WebForms. I presumed that the candidate would jump at the chance of proving their worth prior to an interview.

Here's the test
A dating agency, CandyDate, is running a promotion for its members. 
It will provide some romantic food for one date that is set up for its members.

A date comprises of two people, the organiser and the guest, and a location. 

The Romantic food that the member can choose from is

Belgian Choccies
Grapes
Oysters
Strawberries
Asparagus

A member can only set up one date but can be an guest on any number of dates and the food must be chosen.

When an organiser submits his date there is a 1 in 4 chance he will also win one of 2 bottles of champagne.
After the 2 bottles have been won there should be no more chance to win the champagne (as there's none left)

The website is very simple (and trusting) so no authentication is needed. Each of the members have unique firstnames (for simplicity) allegiance 

Please construct a simple website to model this scenario in ASP.Net WebForms (vb or c#). If you do not have VS2008 handy you can use VS2010 express but please target .net 2.0 or 3.5   (http://www.microsoft.com/express) . If you need to use a db please use SQL2005 express or SQLlite. All other dependencies should be shipped with the website.

The "Date Form" will be a link off the main website so please start off with a dummy landing page.

All that is required is that you give the members the ability to enter the details of a date and a message (or page) to say the date has been submitted confirming the arrangements. A special message will be shown if the member has won the champagne.


Please do not leave the pages unstyled but don't spend hours on your colour schemes/fonts either. Simple is fine.

You shouldn't spend more than 2 hours on this test. 
I thought that the test was

  • very simple
  • open-ended to allow some creativity
  • show a rudimentary knowledge of asp.net , data access and simple logic.
Of the 12 candidates sent the test I had < 50% completion. I couldn't understand why I was getting so few back. These were keen, pre-screened (yes i used recruiters) prospects apparently. So tonight I made the test public and asked for the feedback on Twitter. Some of the comments were along the lines of:
  • Too vague
  • Too long description
  • Two hours is too long.
This surprised me. I kept things deliberately vague so people could create and yet I gave what I thought was enough information to keep them on the right track. I timed the test and did mine well within the allotted timeframe and in any case is 2 hours a lot of time to invest in your career? For over 50% people it was. I think the time issue is the one that gets me.

So I'm interested, after you've done your cv and after you've seen a job you wanted where do you draw the line at making the effort for your new role? I've never had a problem at launching myself at a tech test. I don't mind spending time on a panel interview. Even in failure I've learnt more about myself by going through the motions of applying for a role.

What is more than a job's worth?


3 comments:

caveman_dick said...

I think your problem partly stems from using a Recruitment agency. I currently work for quite a large one and have done for over 4 years. Unfortunately due to the fact that 99% of consultants do not know IT (especially development) and the method of pre-screening amounts to not much more than questions like "Have you done C#.net? Yes that's great I've got the perfect role for you..." This is also incredibly evident in the developers I have on my team, I got asked the other day by a senior dev how to covert a DataTable to a List!!

GraemeF said...

I wouldn't spend only 2 hours on something like that at work because I'd want to write tests, follow SOLID principles and so on, so how can I do it in 2 hours for an interview?

If you want to see who can cut corners or can just hack stuff together quickly then fine, but that's not what I'd be looking for in a developer.

Andi said...

I think 2 hours on a test is a given for any role worth applying for in the development world. If you can't find the time then it doesn't say much for you as an individual.