Living
Pre-Hire Assignments Frustrate Job Applicants in Sluggish Market
Take-home assignments during the interview process are on the rise, irking candidates who say it feels like free work.
Bryan Ashby spent a week completing a complex coding project for a job interview, part of a required take-home assessment.
Photographer: Kim Raff/Bloomberg
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The last thing Bryan Ashby needed was a homework assignment.
The 45 year old had been laid off a month from his job as a software developer. He was juggling a mortgage on his place in Salt Lake City, paying for his 13-year-old daughter’s private-school tuition and applying to scores of jobs. That’s when one of the companies where his interviews were going well told him about the next step: a complex coding project he needed to do using the language C++.