The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework
Despite some of the comments here, I&#x27;m actually a fan of the &#x27;homework&#x27; format. I&#x27;m not always great at hiring, but I know how to gauge the &#x27;homework&#x27; interviews, and I&#x27;ve usually been right about the interviewee&#x27;s abilities afterwards, WAY moreso than whiteboarding or riddles or any of the other alternatives.<p>That being said, I would add some constraints:<p>1. The &#x27;task&#x27; shouldn&#x27;t take more than 30 min to understand, and no more than 1-2 hours to do. If it takes more than that, you should make some obfuscated dummy-code endpoints that do everything you&#x27;re not directly evaluating on.<p>2. You should let the interviewee know that it should only take 2 hours as well. If it takes more, then there was either a misunderstanding in the task, or the interviewee doesn&#x27;t have the right knowledge&#x2F;experience&#x2F;qualifications etc.<p>3. You should do <i>your</i> homework as well, meaning you&#x27;ve thoroughly reviewed the code submitted and have detailed questions ready to go for the interviewee. This should also be the &#x27;control&#x27; to make sure the interviewee really did write the code (you&#x27;ll know really quickly if they didn&#x27;t)<p>4. No other coding tasks in the interview process. You can have them <i>review</i> code or suggest approaches to solve problems (things that people do on the job with others)<p>5. The interview should be shorter than if they were asked to do whiteboarding or live coding or anything like that.<p>Most employers have (on paper) &quot;trial periods&quot; of around 3 months. A 1-2 hour coding assignment followed by 1 hour of well-crafted questions about the assignment (plus the usual interview stuff) should be enough to know whether or not you want to give the employee a chance for 3 months.<p>(I realize most employers don&#x27;t use the evaluation period for evaluative tasks, they just have the person start and hope for the best, but if done right, it&#x27;s actually a pretty good system)