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Thank you for taking the time leave such comprehensive feedback. We have read this fully and want to provide the comprehensive response it deserves. It is regrettable that you have come away from the experience of our interview with the sense that you had been deceived . It is a balancing act to try and give candidates the information they need, to have the best opportunity to give the best impression of themselves, while also remaining fair and consistent in our approach. I have spoken our hiring team to give more detail on the methods of assessment in our interview, so that they can be better prepared to support applicants going through the process in future; making sure that we can accommodate any reasonable adjustments that may be required at interview stage.
Let me attempt to respond to each of your points in turn;
I always ask candidates what they know about the company, as I’m always intrigued to see how close they get to the right answer. As I mentioned in our conversation, it’s normally frowned upon to not know much about a company that you are looking start a career with. However, it is difficult to understand what we do so I try to put candidates at ease by letting them know that it is particularly difficult in our case, before going on to give them a full explanation with examples. The purpose of the initial call is for candidates to have a clear understanding of our business so that they can make an informed decision about working with us. I’m sorry if you felt this came across as anything short of an attempt to reassure you.
Regarding the take home test. I advise all candidates to spend no more or less than 2 hours on the exercise and to provide some text on what they would have done with ore time. It is a refactoring exercise and so it can be difficult to know when you are finished.
It is true that more fail our test than pass it. I tell candidates this so they are under no illusion that it is a pass/fail scenario. Hopefully coupled with the information they have gathered from the wider conversation, they are motivated to give it their best shot. I’m mindful that candidates maybe asked to do lots of code tests when applying for jobs, so again this is an attempt to give them the best chance of doing well.
Finally let me address directly the code test that you found most uncomfortable in our hiring process. We refer to it as a logical test, rather than a code test as the purpose of it is not to solve the puzzle, but to understand how you approach it and whether you are comfortable interacting with other engineers. We place a great deal of emphasis on pair programming here and it is vital that candidates are able to think out loud, listen to help and feedback etc. We are not testing your knowledge of syntax, so we don’t refer to it as a code test. We could for example have run the same session using a whiteboard and pseudo code. The interviewing team weren’t aware that you would have found this uncomfortable and so I can only apologise. Interviews are very nervous and unnatural situations and we try to do our best to make candidates feel relaxed as best we can during the entire process.
Let me take this opportunity to thank you again for the detailed feedback on our interview process and again to let me reiterate our regret that were left feeling deceived in anyway. We will of course take steps to continuously improve. You came across very well and very likeable, getting much further than most candidates in our process. You are clearly a talented engineer and I wish you all the very best in your career.