Le Test

I'm allowed to call it Le Test because I'm a pretentious Frenchman

BuzzFeed title:

You Won't Believe What Candidates Did On This Technical Test

Qu'est-ce que c'est ?

This is the coding test I've been using for almost a year now. I'm updating it, so I thought it would be interesting to share it with the World™. We all know about the technical tests at big tech companies. But, it's interesting to know how small startups approach it.

This has been my first experience as a Lead Front End dev (and hiring manager), so I'm not pretending to have created the best test ever. But, Le Test is drawn from my experience of being both sides of the interviewing desk, having had interviews at >10 companies (big and small).

Establishing this extra step in the hiring process was controversial in the beginning for all the usual reasons:

Good candidates can fail tests
Bad candidates can pass tests
blablabla

Without the red tape of larger businesses, we simply tried it, and we've been quite happy with it so far.

I think it's important to have your own test and not get one from THE internets because the process of writing it helps you think about what you really want in a candidate.

Without further ado, you can challenge yourself at the test, or cheat and look at the answers, or read the debrief if you've got too much time on your hands!

Some bullet points for people who don't like prose

For which company?

It's called LifeWorks. We build an employee engagement platform.
It's a tech company (around 70 people at the time of commiting).
I'm in charge of the Web Team.
Javascript is our main technology.

Why a test?

We need good Front-End engineers for the Web Team.
We needed a way to efficiently filter out candidates that weren't technically sound.
We didn't want a 4-hour test (because we already had one as an extra step of the process – if needed).
We wanted something that resembled big tech companies' tests (they must be doing it for a reason).
But easier (because pragmatism never hurts).

Live coding vs debriefing afterwards?

I did both.

I prefer putting people in a room and asking them questions after, because it's less stressful. But, during interviews with foreign candidates, editing a live Google Doc over Skype worked as well.

Results?

This ended up being a 20-minute pencil&paper test consisting of 10 questions on practical JavaScript fundamentals.

As for how the candidates performed, nothing surprising here: No matter how hard you're trying, you cannot fight against Carl Friedrich and his Gaussian distribution!

Why updating it?

ES6 is here.

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