[sheepmullet]

> and reflects on the (entitled) attitude of the candidate.

It isn't about being entitled. It is about valuing the candidates time.

Almost every company I have worked at has been incredibly picky about work samples. Candidates who did a pretty good job were frequently passed over.

This shows that the company doesn't value the 4-8 hours the candidate has invested. It is the company who is acting entitled.

So now when I get asked to participate in a take home project, I simply move on to the next job. If I participate then I am giving up on 4-5 other jobs for a likely rejection.

Do you publish your acceptance rates? I.e. how many people who complete the requested work end up getting and accepting offers?

If you had a high acceptance rate (say over 70%) I would happily complete a work sample. Most places I've worked at are closer to 10% acceptance rates.

[mrkurt]

We're very, very careful about wasting peoples' time. Most people who complete the sample projects spend an hour or so talking to someone about how the company works, what to expect with hiring, etc. We try and reciprocate on time spent with everyone. Some people don't want that, they'd rather just go off and do the thing, but it's important to us. It _also_ helps us get more completed projects from candidates, so there's a definite benefit beyond warm fuzzies.

That said, we don't have a high acceptance rate. We've noticed that there's a break point for most of these, if you normalize the scores there's a clump of people with >80% and then most are way below that. Depending on the role, and the intensity of the work sample, I think we probably select about 25-30% of completed projects to continue.