I know I said that I’d develop on that caching system but I’ve not had a chance! I have something more interesting anyway; yes it’s hard to imagine anything more interesting than a caching system but it’s true, there are things more interesting than caching (granted not many). I had a programming-exam-interview… thingie.
The test itself was not overly complex, I had an hour to complete as much of a simple yet tricky task, a good understanding of regular expressions will mean that you can do it, you just probably won’t have time to do all of it. The test itself is not the interesting part though, screen scraping it as anybody knows, boring. The part I want to talk about is the fact that there’s a test and the way it was done.
In theory the test will do the following:
- Prove that a candidate can actually program as listed on their CV
- Show exactly how well a candidate can perform at a task that will be a key part of their employment at a company
- Show how good the candidate is at working on their own
I want to explain how this is both good and bad.
Bad
Bad comes in two parts, exam and my selfishness. As with any exam, if I was having a bad day, if I’d not gotten much sleep (which incidentally I didn’t) or any number of other things then it’d have counted against me, it’d have made the test unfair and lowered my chances of progressing further. Obviously this is pot luck and nothing specific against me so by the very same logic I can have good conditions and all other candidates can be so ill they can’t even check their email.
The second part of the bad is my personal selfishness. If I am below average compared to the other candidates (and statistically there’s about a 50% chance I am) then it’ll count against me as would any test of skill. The test was pretty open, I was allowed to use any language I wanted and to output the data into any one of several common formats so that was okay. Again this can go both ways, if I’m above average then this obviously increases my chance of progressing further so is it really bad?
Good
There’s one good thing about it but it’s a big good thing and I think it outweighs the bad by a lot. Assuming all those that work there undergo a similar test it means that the people I work with will be better qualified and if I do slip up (and everybody slips up) then they’re more likely to be of help and it also means that I’m more likely to be able to learn from them and converse in the same terms.
I think it’s a great idea and will be thinking more highly of any companies that employ such a scheme.
re lack of sleep – I blame the cat
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By Jordan 1 Flight Low