[Pyxl101]

I have tried using take-home tests before. The level of plagiarism was astonishing. And that's just the plagiarism I could detect.

Even with a problem that's unique to my organization, I don't know how I could trust that the actual candidate themselves was the one who completed it, and that they completed it without unfair assistance (e.g. from other people). Similarly, I have a habit of looking over someone's resume and picking a few random technologies they mentioned to discuss. I'm surprised how often candidates claim experience with a technology and can't really describe what they've done with it or discuss it intelligently. The level of dishonesty is high.

For all of the downsides of interview-based hiring, at least I know what I'm getting (modulo error bars on assessment efficacy).

> I couldn't remember/figure-out-on-the-spot the iteration condition for estimating square roots by the Newton-Raphson method, and I was not willing to cheat by looking it up on Wikipedia while I was on the phone

I don't ask the kind of questions that require obscure knowledge. I just ask questions that you can problem-solve with regular rational thinking, with questions that usually admit a "naive" brute-force style solution that can be improved upon. If you did want to look up some algorithm that would be fine with me, but I am more impressed by a quick and confident reasoning through the problem followed by a fluid implementation of the naive solution, than I am of sophisticated solutions with better algorithmic performance or accuracy.

[ChuckMcM]

Isn't getting back plagiarized answers a good indication though? Did you tell them you wanted it to be their own work?

As I have gotten older one of the things I'm cognizant of is the difference between what I mean and what my kids hear. So "take this problem home and solve it" from me means that they should take it home work on it themselves and bring back their best solution. But they might hear it "take this out of my sight, put the answer on it, and bring it back to me." where in the land of "out of sight" there are really no restrictions on what or how they get it done. As a result I find myself being a bit prescriptive, saying "Take this home and work on it, and bring me your solution tomorrow, we're going to talk about your process of how you got to the answer. When we talk, saying 'I asked on Stack Overflow' isn't going to be a good answer, ok?"

Their response will be informative, from moral outrage that I would suggest they can't do the work, to understanding that the integrity of the process was part of the problem set. All of that helps you understand how they approach being asked to do things.

[matwood]

We give take home problems and have no issue with plagiarism. In fact we actively say use the internet, books, etc..., and we still get solutions that are wrong or do not even compile.

The ones that do come back and look good, give us a starting point for the interview. If the person did just copy it from somewhere else they have will have a hard time talking about the solution and various pros/cons.

[jghn]

This is how we do things as well. When I walk around our office I always see people looking at SO, Google and others. Why would I hold a candidate to a different standard?

[bdavisx]

>Similarly, I have a habit of looking over someone's resume and picking a few random technologies they mentioned to discuss. I'm surprised how often candidates claim experience with a technology and can't really describe what they've done with it or discuss it intelligently

I know what you're saying, but there's different levels.

Several years ago, I read a couple of books on Hibernate/JPA and played around with it on some toy projects. Where I work never really ended up using it.

Should I put Hibernate on my resume? I know a lot more than someone who has never used it, but it's been a few years since I've done anything with it, and I never really used it in production/anger.

I wouldn't pretend to be an expert (and I'm guessing some people with my level of experience would), but I still think it's OK to put it on my resume (although I'm not sure if it's on my current resume because I don't really care to work with it :)).

[jghn]

I solve this by not using a skills block or anything like that. Partially because I think they're stupid but also partially because IMO it's a no-win situation to figure out what it implies, you'll always mismatch with some interviewer.

[lj3]

> I'm surprised how often candidates claim experience with a technology and can't really describe what they've done with it or discuss it intelligently. The level of dishonesty is high.

This is a requirement to get past the HR gatekeepers at most companies. That may not be the case at your company, but how can I tell? When a critical mass of companies require you to lie before you can even talk to a technical person, then you're going to get lied to as well.

[lisper]

> plagiarism

Triplebyte controls for that by having a followup on-line session where you have to walk them through your code and modify it on the spot. They probably use regular plagiarism filters too.

[jeffasinger]

At one company that did a take home, the first step of the onsite was some pair programming to add a few new small features to my submitted solution.