I have just been offered the opportunity to do a VBA test (“should take no more than 3 hours”!) for the chance to get an interview… for a 3 month contract!
I didn’t find out how many had been selected for the ‘opportunity’. I could have been 1 of 2 or 3, or 1 of 2-3,000. I would guess 10-20? that’s a lot of people wasting 3+ hours
I told them to do one obviously, but I couldn’t help taking a peek at the exercise and scoping it out (wasting a ton of time which I am annoyed at myself for doing, but there you go).
I could do a pretty half arsed job of it in 3 hours, but to do it properly and considering some of the ‘peripheral’ elements (date integrity, error handling etc) there is no way I could do it to what I would consider an acceptable standard in 3 hours. Add the fact that some of the specs were wrong (do I do as per spec or what I think is correct?) and it was at least a full days work.
Bearing in mind this is a test, that will be reviewed so needs to look the part not just functional.
Perhaps if I had ready to go VBA libraries and components I could cobble them together within the timescales. But who has loads of libraries they actually have the right to use? I have a lots of stuff from all the codematic and xlanalyst stuff, but the bulk of the code I have written belongs to clients. (and some of the more useful stuff appears to only be in C, C++ or C#)
The other red flag was advice to do it in a object oriented way. IN A NON OO LANGUAGE FFS!
This may be contentious, but Object Oriented in Excel VBA is utterly retarded. Fact!
(There may be some exceptions but if you are combining data and operations in VBA ‘objects’, what are you using the Excel grid for? Or are you duplicating all that data?)
So I have a few problems with this company’s recruitment process:
- Its unduly burdensome on the potential candidates
- The timescales are for an amateur standard hack
- pre-built components may not be owned by candidates
- OO approach smacks of boys playing at being men.
- Spec was vague and incorrect
- Required effort will put off many candidates
- Some of whom might be ideal but too busy to risk 3+ hours
- 3+ hours for a chance of an interview for a 3 month contract is a very poor risk return compared to the rest of the job market.
- 3+ hours feels more like they want hobbyists rather than professionals.
- lack of respect for candidates time doesn’t bode well for the future role
I mentioned it to one of my contractor mates: “for free? fuck that”.
precisely!
Smurf on Spreadsheets 