Programmer and owner of a technical recruitment agency here. I forked and rewrote the thing to make it more appealing to recruiters: <a href="https://gist.github.com/iwangu/b0d8b8e140afdd4e30bb7e401babcbbc" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/iwangu/b0d8b8e140afdd4e30bb7e401babc...</a>
I mainly removed things that sound patronising to me.<p>I think many HR people will just ignore you if you e-mail what OP posted. Once, I wrote a blogpost why programmers don't get jobs due to random factors ("Why software engineers don’t get jobs: Four horror stories" <a href="https://goo.gl/v4PUWV" rel="nofollow">https://goo.gl/v4PUWV</a>), but being patronising and "explaining programming to HR" is one of the things where you just shoot yourself in the foot by being too demanding too early in the process. You can be demanding ONLY AFTER they told you that they want to hire you, but not before.<p>A tip for e-mailing HR and business e-mails in general: Try to never signal that you will be hard to work with. Always be kind and even a little bit submissive.
Don't try to teach people something, don't quote authors and don't do footnotes. Imagine the person will take a maximum of 3 seconds per paragraph and 10 seconds in total to read your e-mail. There is a chance the reader is listening to an audiobook or is watching Youtube while answering e-mails in a cubicle. If you need to discuss something critical, invite the person for a phone call. Salary, negotiating or deviating from a standard process (like here) should be discussed in person/in a call.<p>Hope that helps to get some insight from "the other side".
It's an interesting idea. Phrased politely I think it's fine to suggest. Still I can understand why people would refuse your approach. There's an obvious risk involved letting the applicant dictate the terms of the evaluation. The point of coding tests is that you can't prepare or easily Google an answer. The employer wants to gauge your unscripted in the moment programming knowledge. Also as someone else said, you need a way to compare apples to apples. Not everyone has an amazing Github to show off.<p>Still I wish employers would better understand the limitations of automated coding tests. Pair exercises where I can use my own environment and think out loud with an interviewer aren't so bad. Fully automated stuff like HackerRank often make simple things overly complicated because they expect answers to be written a certain way. I think those sorts of tests are only suitable for really low level screening - ensuring a sysadmin can use basic bash for example.
You want a personalized interview, styled exactly for you ?<p>I would be a 'no' if i were interviewing me. You obviously can program but this makes you appear to be someone who would be difficult to work with.
As someone responsible for hiring developers, these quizzes seem like an absolute waste of time. As an applicant it's almost insulting.<p>I've been a part of two great alternatives: a pair programming session with the lead dev and adding some features/refactoring a sample project.<p>I'd be curious if anyone here is responsible for hiring devs and finds hackerrank type tests useful.
I think that is a great response. But you also should be prepared for them to say no, not because your proposal is bad, but because many hiring managers want to put all applicants through the same hoops, to understand better how they all compare when having to decide between 5 people who all could do the job well.
My regular policy is to ghost any employer who throws a HackerRank test at me. This is usually a strong indicator that the work environment is incompatible with my values.
> <i>unnatural conditions including (1) time limits, (2) forbidding research on Wikipedia or StackOverflow, (3) forbidding collaboration, and (4) forbidding the use of libraries</i><p>The above indeed does not make sense, unless you're hiring a solve-puzzles-as-sports person.<p>I don't think it's enforced by HackerRank, though. It must be the employer's requirement. If so, their hiring process does have problems.
Many recruitment agencies won't even talk to you until you pass some FizzBuzz test on HackerRank or similar. Even Facebook strongly suggest you to take their own training based off similar platform and Google does something similar. So it seems that even entry level jobs these days require Googlesque excellence just to get your foot in the door. It's similar to law firms requiring you to take parts of bar exam during your interview or physicians to perform autopsy during interview. Even worse situation is with Machine Learning now, where you are expected to answer PhD exam-style questions for entry level data augmentation jobs. Unless you are from Top 10 school your credentials don't matter at all. It's IMO complete insanity and I am throwing such companies out of the door instantly unless they offer $500k+/year. Then we can talk that way.
As a hiring manager, I personally don't use HackerRank (or anything similar), but I'm <i>thinking</i> about it. My issue is that many of the people who I come across (most of whom claim to have backgrounds in CS) don't have even basic coding skills. For example, "write a function to reverse a string in a language of your choice" baffles them or takes 20 minutes to write, even though it was meant to be a quick warm-up question. If I <i>know</i> someone is strong coming in (for example, someone I trust recommended them), I will tailor the questions more to them, but otherwise, giving some basic coding problems weeds out a lot of people and saves everyone some time.<p>Even a short phone screen where I just ask someone to code a simple question takes 20-30 minutes of my time (plus however much time I need to get back in the zone), so HackerRank is appealing if only to weed out the very worst candidates. I'm not familiar with HackerRank specifically, but I imagine you have some choice as to how to set it up. If I could set it up to give candidates plenty of time and ask relatively straightforward questions to weed out people who don't have the basics down, it would be a huge time saver for me.
It seems to me that this is a well-written, polite, non-confrontational counter-proposal.<p>My opinion is that the company may have two responses that are both valid and legitimate: i) <i>"Sure, go on, nice idea!"</i> or ii) <i>"No, sorry, please follow our established hiring practices"</i>.<p>Now, if the company takes that as arrogance and that email only is reason to eliminate the candidate, the email still actually worked as a great way for the candidate to eliminate the company. If a company punishes a polite, thoughtful disagreement from a candidate, it must be a horrible place to work for.
I think it's probably a great way to understand the culture of the hiring organisation and to see if your approach would work with theirs.<p>It'll probably be relatively unsuccessful at a bigger company with worse internal comms, with an HR function that's too far removed from the engineering team.<p>I'm sure you'll find a job that suits _you_ with this approach, though.
Not being a programmer, nor a recruiter for IT jobs, but having some experience in recruiting in my professional field, it doesn't look to me like such a great letter/proposal.<p>Mind you, this might also depend on the specifics of the ad/request Mr. Fasiha was responding to.<p>I mean this same letter if received from a senior developer would be received very differently than if coming from a first time or junior developer.<p>What strikes me as negative, is - beyond the unneeded citation - is the sneaky/flattering tone (IMHO) or - maybe - failed attempt at humour in this sentence:<p>>I'd never heard of HackerRank, but after you wrote two other employers sent me their own HackerRank tests. Having worked on those tests first (I considered them practice, for the real thing with ABC :)<p>Then right after having confessed an almost total ignorance on the test, and only two previous experiences with it, the Author goes on at length enumerating in detail why and how the tests are "wrong".<p>I would have more liked a sentence to the effect of either "after having gone through these tests n times I find them inaccurate" or "never heard about these tests, not being familiar with them I fear they might not reflect entirely my potentiality".<p>Pontificating on something you just stated not being fully familiar with doesn't sound that good to me.
When looking for a new job I typically run a few applications at a time since companies are so unreliable and, frankly, I don't have the time or inclination for<p>* 5 x 45 minute phone screens<p>* 5 x 2-3 hour coding test (some of which will be the same)<p>* 5 x 3 hour face-to-face interview<p>Over the course of 2 weeks while attending my current job. Companies should consider this when trying to hire "exceptional" candidates who value their own time.
In their defense, they probably have a very difficult time weeding out candidates that don't know anything about programming. It seems like this is the new alternative to a 30 minute phone screen, and I bet a lot of candidates actually like it. But it's good they have your feedback, and if they aren't too crusty, they will use your demonstration of knowledge in stead of your HackerRank score as proof you know your stuff and pass you on to the next level.
You probably might as well have written 'no' for all the difference it will make, but I have to commend you on the carefully worded and actionable bits in your reply.<p>If I were the prospective employer I'd probably write you back that <i>before</i> we will invest into looking at your production we kindly ask you once again to jump over the low bar that was set for all applicants. Then again, if I were your prospective employer I'd never have used hackerrank in the first place because I feel that to expose a potential recruit to a third party service would be a breach of confidentiality and besides I feel that such services are - as you correctly identify - ill suited to picking the people I'd want to work with.<p>It's akin to a luxury fizz-buzz test.
Boom. Hired.<p>If any of the candidates I've interviewed and hired had this sort of independent and outside-the-box thinking, I'd have doubled their salaries when I hired them.
I wonder what happened to human discernment. It’s like people think liars get away without detection. The only reason a person who bullshits an interview gets hired is because the interview was a formality to begin with; eg. Friend of management who the whole interview board knew was BSing but also value their paycheck too much to object. Yea, we don’t want that situation, and clamping down on nepotism etc. at the candidate level is just wrong. “Boo hoo, too many candidates, lets engineer a rube goldberg machine to make us feel objective.” Just treat candidates as people...<p>I can’t imagine hiring to scale product development inside such a dirty room. The most successful businesses I know of simply don’t complain about these things, nor have personnel problems; people do the work that needs to get done with a good attitude etc, with little awareness of title... acting more like “mom and pop” businesses who value relationships.<p>How is any company building an awesome thing with an awesome team, with word of mouth not bringing a torrent of personal references from the rank and file? The good ones have that going on in my experience, there is just a glut of shit rung employers (and candidates) here shaping our views toward defensiveness.
> <i>Would ABC be willing to work with me to define a better way...</i><p>"Better"<p>Open source contributions carry a set of particular demographic biases to a hiring process. They skew things towards comparatively well-resourced white men.<p>There's certainly an argument to say that open source contribution is an indicator of ability, but there are other ways to assess ability which don't introduce such a heavy skew.
This tells me that author was never involved in recruiting people. He may be smart (even exceptionally so) but that can only be validated through a direct interview. However since a lot of people (and I mean A LOT) cheat in their CV and even GitHub portfolios, getting upset over "show us that you can do anything" minimal bar test is something I'd rather not get in my mailbox. It's polite and well worded, that's true, but shows that he doesn't understand the realities recruiters are facing. I'd respond to his mail explaining why these tests are mandatory but inevitably I'd have to treat him like a child that faces the world for the very first time. I guess he should ask himself: do you want to be treated exceptionally throughout the recruitment process? If you think you're that unique, you're probably wrong (and that level of detachment from reality isn't looking good).
Evaluating someone based on their GitHub repos isn't trivial at all, and it's not something a (non-developer) recruiter generally can do effectively. At the stage when HackerRank is relevant, the recruiter is trying to decide who to put in front of a technical interviewer.<p>It's important to keep in mind the big advantage of tools like HackerRank: They're scalable for the employer, allowing the employer to take a chance on more candidates.<p>Without something like HackerRank, recruiters will tend towards lesser heuristics, such as top schools or top firms on candidates' CVs. While HackerRank has its issues, it's certainly a vastly superior heuristic than the alternative for those many of us that don't have that kind of CVs.<p>It's also relatively scalable for the applicant, because it is asynchronous, and can be taken whenever convenient. For many people in jobs, taking a phone interview during business hours isn't easy.
Honestly, HackerRank is a pretty standard and easy test. I really think it's a reasonable test, at least more reasonable than some. I've been given much harder take home tests:<p><a href="https://austingwalters.com/you-are-given-a-deck-containing-n-cards-2/" rel="nofollow">https://austingwalters.com/you-are-given-a-deck-containing-n...</a><p>However, HackerRank is just a screen on:<p>1. Are you going to be difficult<p>2. Do you have basic coding skills<p>Typically, I'd interview at least 10 people before I'd give an offer. Once we added improved screening we got that number down to 5 people before an offer (note screening wasn't HackerRank).<p>I think it's reasonable to screen and HackerRank is just that, it's not about complexity.
The point of an interview process isn't to find out stuff about you in isolation; it's to be able to compare you to other candidates. That's only possible if all the candidates go through the same process. Also, processes get calibrated over time. The most bewildering thing to do as an interviewer is to try a new process, because it's difficult to tell how a candidate did without having collected some other data points.
> I'm hoping ABC's recruitment policy is flexible enough to let me offer alternative, or at least parallel, routes to quantifying my skill in coding [...] Would ABC be willing to work with me to define a better way to check my technical qualifications by choosing one of these projects?<p>It's good to see someone take the initiative to express this, but IMHO, it would be even better to just take the initiative to contribute to one of the proposed open source projects and put it on your resume, <i>and</i> participate in the Hackerrank part of the interview.<p>I like the proposals, and I'd probably land on the side of impressed if a candidate I was interested in sent me a letter like this. But, I still need a quick way to screen people, and I also need a set of standard questions that all candidates get so I can compare & rank them. I don't use Hackerrank, but I do ask easy weeder questions in the same style.<p>Then, after the candidate passes the easy part, I look at their portfolio of work projects and side projects, and consider everything they have to offer.
It is difficult to believe that the person who knows how to sling slang like "chops" (technical command and facility in a given domain)is the same person who is only just hearing of HackerRank through an employer's request. Also saying condescending things like "cute little" in your response takes away from your earnestness cred and makes you seem angry. No one wants to start off angry with a new hire. That said, you have a right to be angry when an employer chooses to "batch process" you like just another piece of data. While your proposal is great and it shows you go above and beyond, and employer who uses HackerRank isn't looking for above and beyond. Use it to weed out employers who won't meet you halfway as a partner- the way you want to be met. If you are looking to work with a Willy Wonka, consider the thought and care that went into his job interview.
You are not alone in your frustration, and I suspect most people here will sympathize with you as this topic comes up quite often in the software community. Just be aware that drawing this kind of line in the sand is going to greatly limit your options.<p>If you want to be evaluated in a more holistic manner (including side projects) you'll probably have better luck with very small companies. When the people in charge will actually be the ones working with you every day, and they are only filling a small number of positions, they will be more likely to find it worthwhile to get to know you as a whole person during the hiring process.<p>Unfortunately, once a company is beyond a certain size this just isn't possible because it doesn't scale. They have to fill hundreds or thousands of positions and also maintain a universal set of hiring standards. Things degrade into a game of numbers. This makes cookie-cutter tests almost inevitable.<p>While frustrating in their own right, for me what makes things worse is that you have to do one of these screens for every single company you apply to. And most companies have the same evaluation goals for the phone screen stage (e.g., do you actually understand data structures & algorithms).<p>What I'd really like to see is the emergence of something like a "common app" for software hiring. Outsource technical screening to a reputable third-party, and once you've proven yourself by obtaining a good enough "score" you can move immediately to on-sites (what constitutes a "good" score would vary by company). This doesn't solve the problem of the efficacy of technical screens, but it at least cuts down on all the redundant effort.<p>Two services I've tried so far that are doing something like this are Interviewing.io and A-List. Unfortunately it seems these services merely make it easier to <i>get</i> a phone screen, rather than replacing them. But it seems like a step in the right direction.
In general, I find that assuming that other players will act rationally or in their own best-interests (according to my subjective definitions) is inadvisable. If OP has a major problem with the quality of their hiring process then, by extension, he <i>could</i> also have major problems with his potential co-workers and the organisation's culture.<p>The value proposition of investing time and effort into interviewing with this company appears to be less than, say, interviewing companies whose priorities are well-aligned with OP from the get-go. That being said, these kinds of "coding puzzle" screeners aren't going anywhere, and may lock him out of great opportunities at great companies.<p><i>"I'd rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."</i>
Evaluating side projects is a perfectly valid way to document a software engineer's potential value to a company, but that's not really the point of HackerRank. The purpose of HackerRank is to be a coding <i>screen</i> - that is, a test of basic ability to code simple algorithmic problems under moderate time pressure.<p>I have taken a number of HackerRank screens myself, and I have never seen one that either (a) tests beyond the coding level that would be expected of a fresh CS graduate or (b) is not vastly exceeded in scope and complexity by the coding challenges given during the onsite, which do allow considerably more flexibility and relax some of the artificial constraints.<p>Why attempt to circumvent a test that is meant as a slightly less trivial FizzBuzz?
I don't think I can find it right now, but I recall a comment by Patrick MacKenzie (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11</a>) to the effect that companies that have onerous interviews often also have a "cheat code" path for highly accomplished candidates (well known figures, or someone who's strongly vouched for by someone highly trusted within the company) who find the normal interview process unwelcome.<p>This response seems like an attempt to engineer that path out of nothing. Good luck, but you can also avoid these interviews if you can make those connections/build your reputation to the right extent.
I think this is a perfectly valid response if you are senior/experienced/specialist and asked to do these impersonal quizzes. "We need to filter out the idiots" is not a valid reason to waste an experienced candidate's time either.
One the one hand, I agree about the mismatch between hackerrank and engineering skill. On the other, I also suspect there are many engineers who can code amazing personal projects who lack the motivation/communication to handle the kinds of maintenance tickets you'd likely see in a mediocre codebase for a noname b2b (or whatever the job is).<p>I tried to build my own coding test that is based on refactoring based on changing requirements: <a href="https://alexrohde.com/public/zennish/index.html#/challenges" rel="nofollow">https://alexrohde.com/public/zennish/index.html#/challenges</a>
I'll admit my initial reaction to these sort of requests can be pretty negative, I did find this letter well written and wouldn't have a problem with it if I received it.<p>That being said, depending on the type of company and the number of candidates they are dealing with, I wouldn't be surprised if they simply ignore your letter rather than trying to deal with it. If you have 60+ more or less qualified applicants for a single job opening your first job is to get that down to less than 10 as quickly as possible and throwing out anything that doesn't fit into your template is a quick and popular first step.
I worked in a job a couple of years ago with a small team that was hiring quite fast so it was typical to have to evaluate 10 applicants a week. Since as leads and seniors we were very busy Hackerrank was a useful way to evaluate lots of people without much effort and easily compare them by “score”. That said I regret it because the results were not as good. Every candidate is different enough that each interview turns out completely different. I think a better policy is if you’re too busy to give people the attention they need as they go through the pipeline - just wait until you’re not busy if possible.
I have no allegiance to the HackerRank or the current hiring process of most Bay Area tech companies. The basic formula is: first a chat with the recruiter/hiring manager to establish interest; follow up with a screener that is a take-home exercise, HackerRank exercise, or phone interview with an exercise; then a four to five hour on-site. This is a lot of time for everyone involved.<p>What are the alternatives?<p>They need to minimize time, give everyone a fair chance, and improve the signal. I certainly wouldn't say the current method is great at meeting those criteria.
Good luck but they may just want a robot who shuts up and conforms. Despite some people here saying the balance of power does not necessarily rest with the employer, in some cases it does if there are many desperate job seekers who are willing to jump through hoops. You may want to apply to specific smaller teams and/or do your own thing. That said, if you do bite, I have learned a lot from my stints at places who hire like this. The biggest lesson I learned after several years is doing my own thing is right for me.
Way to go!<p>IMO If employer is adamant to rely only on cookie cutter first round interviews, then it’s probably not worth joining such places. It’ll be filled with people who are great at cracking such interviews and believing that these cookie cutter interviews are the only way to go.<p>There will be people on both sides of this debate, pro and anti.<p>If you don’t believe in solving algorithms/ hackarank type initial interviews, it’s good to challenge such requests.<p>If you are fine with it, that’s great. You and the employer have the same thinking. And it’ll/ May work great!
No, no, no. They have the job, you want it. That email comes across so arrogant that I would expect even the newest hiring manager to laugh and delete.<p>Without even addressing the sour grapes attitude about coding interviews, the sheer arrogance with which you try to dictate someone else's process is a red flag in the first place. That, plus the fact that you're refusing to do what they want, is really bad for your chances of being hired.
I agree with you on the points that HackerRank actually is not a very good indicator of how good programmer one is.<p>However unless they really like your profile they will immediately next you after that kind of response because companies also don't have time for this nonsense. They just want a standardised tests for all candidates so they can rank them and then hire the best.
I've done ballsy shit like this to get attention from employers. Once I was too slow with the programming questions in the screen-share, so I put up a website with a detailed solution to the last question.<p>I almost got the job, they randomly canceled the on-site at the last minute. Needless to say, I think my effort at least got me to that final step.
One of our hiring managers uses HackerRank as a basic filter. (If you are applying for a position called Data Scientist and you cannot do a linear regression, you are applying at the wrong company.)<p>I think an email like this would be just fine, for them.<p>I think it would go over badly at companies where HR runs the hiring process.
From both sides as a hiring manager and candidate, I’ve found that a take-home coding challenge that’s tailored to the company is a far better indicator of fit.<p>With a tailored take-home, the company has a chance to evaluate candidates based on more realistic, holistic challenges than “solve this academic comp sci problem that you won’t actually encounter on the job”. And candidates can get a better sense of the type of work and challenges they’d actually be tackling on the job.<p>The take-home isn’t tailored to each candidate. The opposite, actually: it needs to be the same for all so that candidates’ solutons can be compared.<p>Here’s the tl;dr example of a challenge we give web engineering candidates:<p>“Here’s our API and API docs: <link>. Create an interactive data visualization using D3 and any other tools you’d like. Your submission should include instructions on how to run it.”<p>By keeping the challenge relatively unconstrained, we allow candidates to show some creativity and prompt them to make the same feature/quality/speed tradeoffs that they’d have to make in the role. We look for autonomous individuals, so this turns out to be a good filter. We encourage them to spend less than 4 hours on it, but our time limit is a pretty generous 1 week since they likely already have a full time job and other interviews.
As reasonable as this seems on the surface it implies a person who will likely next send me 3 pages about how he should be exempt from the vacation policy and a treatise on how we are doing our health insurance. I'd be a hard pass after reading this.
Developers that are in high demand can help guide prospective employers on what sort of technical interviews are acceptable and which are a waste of time on everyone's parts.
always thought candidates with side projects could be spared of Hackerrank tests.<p>Yes, side projects can be fake but thats why you interview for multiple rounds.
Think even there is no proof a candidate really took the HRank test.
In the time it took to write this, he could've finished the test. He might've even spent <i>longer</i> on this.<p>Ideas for how to do hiring differently are cheap and plentiful.
There are very, very many comments here accusing HackerRank and/or puzzle/algorithm problems in general of being poor tests for how good a programmer someone is, or that people who use such problems just want "robot" workers to churn out meaningless code.<p>These comments are completely missing the point. HackerRank's value is as a <i>screening</i> process. The point of such problems in the early phases of an interview is not to find out how <i>good</i> a programmer you are, but how <i>bad</i> a programmer you are.<p>There are an ASTOUNDING number of candidates for programming jobs who can barely code. FizzBuzz eliminates a lot of them, but sometimes you need something just a <i>bit</i> more difficult. That's where HackerRank comes in.<p>When talking to people that are "professional programmers actively seeking work" I find that the majority of them can't do simple tasks. "Simple" isn't meant in an arrogant way, either; examples include reversing an array (with no space constraint), iterating a dictionary/map (regardless of understanding map implementation, a lot of people don't understand that iteration order isn't predictable), and basic use of nested lists/non-scalar data structures. Those aren't esoterica that "nobody uses" on a daily basis, they're bread and butter of programming work.<p>These people have hobby projects/OSS work, it's just . . . not sufficient, in many cases, to indicate basic competence on the job. I don't know why that doesn't correlate. I don't think most of these people are lying and publishing work that isn't theirs. It might be that they have a very long time to write the stuff in their GitHubs or whatever and can't do basic things in a hurry otherwise. It might be something else. Regardless, they turn out to be unqualified when tested on the basics.<p>If you find the problems insultingly easy, choke it down and consider it equivalent to the question of "are you comfortable being asked to show up to work on time?"--patronizing, but an easy box to check, and not meant for you.<p>There are companies that rely entirely on very hard/complex algorithms problems for interviewing, with the full knowledge of what they're testing for and why they're using those tests. I'm not talking about those companies; there are good and bad reasons for doing that. I'm talking about simple coding challenges presented early on in the candidate's process.<p>There are also companies that get confused as to what they're using the HackerRank-equivalent tests for, and give really hard problems (or, worse, puzzle problems that block all progress and rely on some sort of "gotcha" trivia knowledge to even approach), but evaluate candidates' performance as if those problems were FizzBuzz++ basic competence screenings. That's a mistake, but also not what I'm talking about here.
In addition to my other projects, I've also added the code of all HackerRank problems I've solved to a repository on Github. I link that profile whenever I look for a job. This way the recruiters have an abundant source of code samples they can look at when making their decisions.
I can see giving a test like this for an entry level job, but for more senior positions it doesn't really make much sense to me. I'd rather show off a bunch of projects I have under my belt or code I've written in the past.<p>For example, I haven't had to write my own algorithm to parse a b-tree or implement binary search since I left school. I could explain how these algos work, but to actually implement it perfectly in python or java under timed conditions with no outside docs, I would most certainly fail and the company would miss out on a pretty good generalist.
I have had the misfortune of doing a few HackerRank tests where the problems were not prepared well.<p>For example, the correct answer does not appear in the list of available options, or where the problem statement is not precise enough to solve in an unambiguous manner.<p>There is no human I can talk to and ask clarifying questions to resolve the ambiguity because, you know, it is a HackerRank test!<p>After going through these experiences, I have decided that HackerRank test is just not worth the time. As a rule, I decline any request to take a HackerRank test citing my reasons as politely as possible. Surprisingly, more often than not, the recruiter is happy to setup a telephone round where I can talk to an actual human.