Articles by Ari Zilnik
Take-home design challenges don’t work — here’s how to fix themTake-home design challenges, which are often given to candidates during the hiring process to assess their skills and fit for a company, have a number of issues, including being exploitative of candidates, not providing insight into a candidate's problem-solving abilities, and not giving a sense of how a candidate would fit in with a team on a day-to-day basis. Instead of using these challenges, Ari suggests bringing in candidates for a half-day collaborative design session, where they work on a problem with the team and can be assessed on their ability to think and work with others. If a take-home challenge must be used, Ari recommends setting reasonable time expectations, giving feedback to candidates, and being transparent about the purpose of the challenge.