- Sep 13, 2001
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So today I had to take an assessment test for a potential recruiter type person I'm talking to. It was a test that was 30 questions and you had 3 minutes for each question. You could use any resources you wanted to try and answer em, but after 3 minutes you either guess or it moves onto the next question.
It was from the company Select2Perform which used to be BrainBench (I had heard of them before I took this one).
I took the test, and I ended up getting great scores. I was in the 92 percentile globally, and the guy who had me take the test told me it was a great score.
Now the thing about this test is, I'd say like 90% of the questions did not even really pertain to the actual real world. Like it's nothing you would even use when actually developing software.
There were a few questions that asked what the output would be. Well I simply ran the code in netbeans, and saw the output. Most of them were like 6 lines of code, and would be easy to simply read through, but I just put em in and compiled them to verify that I got the right answer. That is also what I would do in the real world, code something, test out the output, and if it works as expected, continue.
There were some other ones that showed some code, and asked what error would happen if you tried to switch variable types. So I just ran those in code as well, since they were totally dealing with areas that I was not familliar with using specific Java RMI classes, and asking me what types of exceptions they would throw.
Other questions dealt with the order of the Heap, when JIT compile happens, and other stuff that just does not really matter in the real world. But with the resources I had, ie google, it was easy to find the answer out for the majority of the questions if I didn't know them, in the 3 minutes allotted.
I am just wondering if people in here have taken these types of tests, and if so, what do they really think about them?
EDIT:
And on another note, for another company I have an interview with tomorrow, I took an "assessment test" which was them giving me a small project to complete within 2 hours. So I did it in like 90 mins and emailed it back, and the next day they wanted me to come in for an interview. It seems THAT type of "assessment test" is much more worthwhile, since they can actually see how you think, how you can work under pressure, and can see your coding style.
It was from the company Select2Perform which used to be BrainBench (I had heard of them before I took this one).
I took the test, and I ended up getting great scores. I was in the 92 percentile globally, and the guy who had me take the test told me it was a great score.
Now the thing about this test is, I'd say like 90% of the questions did not even really pertain to the actual real world. Like it's nothing you would even use when actually developing software.
There were a few questions that asked what the output would be. Well I simply ran the code in netbeans, and saw the output. Most of them were like 6 lines of code, and would be easy to simply read through, but I just put em in and compiled them to verify that I got the right answer. That is also what I would do in the real world, code something, test out the output, and if it works as expected, continue.
There were some other ones that showed some code, and asked what error would happen if you tried to switch variable types. So I just ran those in code as well, since they were totally dealing with areas that I was not familliar with using specific Java RMI classes, and asking me what types of exceptions they would throw.
Other questions dealt with the order of the Heap, when JIT compile happens, and other stuff that just does not really matter in the real world. But with the resources I had, ie google, it was easy to find the answer out for the majority of the questions if I didn't know them, in the 3 minutes allotted.
I am just wondering if people in here have taken these types of tests, and if so, what do they really think about them?
EDIT:
And on another note, for another company I have an interview with tomorrow, I took an "assessment test" which was them giving me a small project to complete within 2 hours. So I did it in like 90 mins and emailed it back, and the next day they wanted me to come in for an interview. It seems THAT type of "assessment test" is much more worthwhile, since they can actually see how you think, how you can work under pressure, and can see your coding style.
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