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When I was reading Asked to complete interview exercise, but ignoring GitHub work demoing expertise? and imagined beeing in this situation, I concluded I would not even have the time to take this test. Not to mention, doing it for multiple companys.

But all the posts and comments on that OP made the impression it would make me appear arrogant and it's anyway unlikely they would omit this excercise.

Are companys with an regulated hiring process that inflexible as mentioned in the linked post, so that chances of getting hired would be limited due to my lack of available time to perform test excercies?

Or is the mentioned case not that common at all?

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Zaibis
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    It seems extreme to me, I've never been asked to test for that long. It will be interesting to hear what others have to say. – Kilisi Mar 09 '16 at 10:39
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    "Real questions have answers. Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click here." I've my post seems to be offtopic because of that I'll just edit it out to make the purpose of the OP more clear, sicne I'm actually asking straight question which is not related to my situation. Also I wouldn't call my situation terrible in anyway. @Whoever VTC'ed – Zaibis Mar 09 '16 at 10:40
  • @Kilisi: Same over here, but the post seems to be off-topic. – Zaibis Mar 09 '16 at 10:52
  • Several hours is a bit extreme, but standard practice for at least a handful of companies that I can name. It's normal to spend about an hour on site or potentially four hours at home demonstrating your skills. I imagine this is dependent on exactly where you live. – jimm101 Mar 09 '16 at 11:17
  • @JoeStrazzere: A companys guideline how they do their hireing process, was what I tryed to express by that. – Zaibis Mar 09 '16 at 11:22
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    I wouldn't say it's an advice question but this is likely too broad for a definitive answer as that all depends on industry, location and experience level of the position. You also have to remember that plenty of companies simply suck at hiring so what's common might not be what's best. I think a more useful question would be "When should I consider requiring a take-at-home exercise in my hiring process?" – Lilienthal Mar 09 '16 at 11:23
  • @Zaibis By your own definition this would then be off-topic as company-specific. There is no real industry standard for this as far as I know. Asking a new question like the one I suggested in my earlier comment or something asking about the pros and cons of these exercises is a valid question here imo. – Lilienthal Mar 09 '16 at 11:24
  • @Lilienthal: Actually my intention is just to make clear the implication of the linked posts comments which sound to me like "If you can't effort time for taking for 4hours tests, you can't expect to get hired" is actually to take place commonly or it just is more of an exception for professionals that are actually employed and ahve multiple years working experience and there for nothing I should worry about that much. If thats not clear from OP, how could I improve OP? if thats Off-topic, I'm sorry about. – Zaibis Mar 09 '16 at 11:30
  • Is it common - YES. I've also seen some of the big boys use online IDEs for these tests that not just check the code, but record how you do it, i.e. typing, pasting etc and can replay everything you did, so refactoring etc can be seen, and if you do tests, they can see if you really did TDD, or just tacked them on at the end.. – The Wandering Dev Manager Mar 09 '16 at 12:47
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    Look at it this way: if you don't want to go through with the test you don't have to! You simply keep applying to different companies until you find one you like, and which won't make you write a silly test. What people were trying to get the OP of that other question to understand is that once a company has decided to perform the test it's very unlikely that you can ask for special treatment regarding the matter. – AndreiROM Mar 09 '16 at 14:44
  • @AndreiROM: If you would write this as an answer, I would accept it since thats the kind of statement I was looking for. – Zaibis Mar 09 '16 at 16:32
  • @Zaibis - unfortunately the question has been closed, however I'm glad you got the insight you were looking for :) – AndreiROM Mar 09 '16 at 16:46

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I could imagine that permanent roles undergo considerably more scrutiny than contractors, as the latter are typically more easily let go.

Being a contractor, I was subjected to a 1-hour test in the final stage of the interviewing process for my current role.

Personally, I found the 1-hour test to be OK, as it was timed and the object quite clearly was not to finish the tasks, but to reveal ones thinking and work habits.

Having said that, an hour is just about the maximum I will spend, as I cannot see what a additional 3 hours would reveal.

morsor
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    +1 I agree with the one hour is ample time, if most local companies were stipulating 3 hours though, then it would definitely affect hireability. – Kilisi Mar 09 '16 at 10:54
  • I've had tests with intriguing tasks and one which reflected rather badly on the hiring company. In both cases, I felt it was a hour well-spent. – morsor Mar 09 '16 at 12:46