The process started with a short Teams call — mostly a casual, get-to-know-you chat with a few standard technical questions. The recruiter outlined the steps as follows:
1. A 2.5-hour “communication challenge”
2. A follow-up meeting to review it
3. If successful, an onsite visit for a full-day technical challenge and team introduction
4. Final hiring decision
For the communication challenge, I was given a short YouTube video outlining the scenario migrating a law firm from SBS 2000 to Exchange Server 2019 and asked to write a proposal. The challenge was framed as a test of project management and communication skills.
However, the scenario in the video was vague. This led to some assumptions and generalised steps in my proposal — which were repeatedly pointed out as issues during the review. It felt like I was penalised for not addressing things that weren’t included in the brief to begin with.
Overall, the communication challenge seemed poorly designed. Despite being framed as non-technical, the reviewers focused heavily on implementation-level technical details, including whether specific steps would work on SBS 2000 — a product over 25 years old. This didn’t align with the stated intent of assessing communication and planning, especially when a separate technical challenge was supposed to come later.
The follow-up meeting (about an hour) included some positive feedback, but also criticism for not following the “SSW way” — such as not using their internal formatting conventions (colour scheme, list structure) or linking to company policies (which I was never shown or told were publicly available).
At the end of the review, I was asked to revise and resubmit the proposal — a step that was never mentioned earlier in the process. I raised concerns about the lack of clarity and shifting expectations, but this feedback wasn’t well received.
In the end, I chose to withdraw from the process due to:
• The unexpected and undocumented extra step (proposal revision)
• The significant time burden compared to standard processes for Senior SysAdmin roles
• The misalignment between the challenge tasks and the actual responsibilities of the role
• And the overall poor design of the communications challenge
