[custos]

Best company I've been hired at did a sample project.

They had the project all setup and ready to go. All I had to do was fill in some of the more complicated bits (hooking up to the database using LINQ to SQL, and implement some queries to search by name/album and two or three other fields).

Then display them in a certain order.

I was given an hour to do it. Apparently, after I was hired, I was told I was the only one they interviewed that could do it. Ironic part was I'd never used LINQ to SQL before and had studied it the night prior. (It was on the job posting)

[sleazebreeze]

At my last job, I set up something like this. We were specifically interviewing people who claimed to have frontend and Angular experience - I confirmed this on every resume before the interview and again with the candidate before explaining the test. To test it, I gave the test to 2 coworkers who each completed it in under 15 minutes. Candidates were given an hour for it.

The test was a JSFiddle pre-filled out with Angular boilerplate. It had comments in places where things needed to be added and filled out. Just to be clear, there was no gotchas or tricks involved. It was very simple: "get JSON from this public HTTP endpoint, display it on the page in a table and then add a filter field. If there's time, add some CSS to make it look pretty."

Candidates were encouraged to use docs and Google if they couldn't remember off the top of their head how to do those. More than one candidate copy/pasted from Stack Overflow during the interview and while I wasn't impressed, I didn't count it against them.

Several candidates completely failed at it and I suspect it was a combination of nerves and lack of experience (one candidate it became clear that he had never used Angular before and he never got past the "get JSON from an HTTP endpoint"). During the test, I was more than willing to talk through the code with them and help them figure out the best way to do it. The one candidate who passed it was hired and they were very successful at the company.

[taco_emoji]

Was it marked as a requirement by the job posting? Because if not, that's just a test of knowledge, not ability.

[xigency]

The test is the ability to apply knowledge, which is probably the only thing they need.

The commenter did say it was mentioned in the job listing.

[taco_emoji]

Yes, I understand that it was mentioned, my question was whether it was mentioned as a requirement.

If the listing just said "LINQ-to-SQL knowledge a plus" but then gave you a test that actually required foreknowledge of it, then that's kinda shitty.