I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Growing Minds (Netherlands) in Jan 2022
Interview
The steps were usual as general conversion with recruiter, technical conversation with tech people. They asked me to fill out a skill inventory excel file and sent me an assignment after the tech conversation.
In the assignment, they asked me to work specifically with Symfony despite the fact that my knowledge is basic which I already stated in the skill inventory. The assignment was to develop a RESTful API with a few endpoints.
They didn't send me an offer because of the followings (copy-paste from their response);
1. Skills inventory was not matching the seniority level that they are looking for in a senior
2. Demonstrated a very basic (near their opinion) application, which wasn't at all representing what a senior developer does on their team
3. Code challenge, which was pretty okay, but a big red flag for them was the mindset of making a mistake in the company's name, and instead of correcting the issue, you proceeded with repeating the error and giving them a heads up
4. Just made the deadline; hence they are missing your excitement of really investing time and building something impressive.
My objections;
1. So why did you send me an assignment in the first place?
2. I am not sure what they were expecting, but, the API was following the RESTful practices and other requirements. Also, my knowledge is basic on Symfony, hence, spent a lot of time reading documentation and doing searches.
3. I made a typo in the name of the company which wasn't affecting a functional solution, I didn't fix it since I had no time. Criticizing this makes no sense.
4. I have a full-time job and a personal life, I can not spend my whole free time on an assignment that is being evaluated by other PEOPLE.
It is totally okay to be rejected, but the above reasons make no sense at all. You can let me know if any part of the code affects performance, maintainability, security, etc. You can not ignore the knowledge that I didn't have on Symfony! To me, you are able to evaluate a project correctly, because the project covers all your expectations in the assignment document.
