> Problem the 1st: how do you verify the example project is actually the candidate's own work?
Get them to talk about it in the interview
> Problem the 2nd: building and maintaining a non-trivial open source project is a huge investment of time...
Not really - in one weekend you probably can create something interesting and good enough for showing off to an employer. Also it will probably draw you in and you spend more time (for the fun of it) making it better. But you don't have to.
For those people who prefer FizzBuzz tests to implementing interesting stuff, I suggest companies provide the option to do a test for those who don't want to submit their project code.
> Good luck with that co-ordination problem.
A first stage could be that we say "no tests until at least an interview has occurred and the candidate has progressed to the next stage". That is in any candidates own interests regardless of other's actions - so wouldn't require coordination, just communication of the idea. It is in his own interests because the time spent on the speculative work could be better yielded doing something else, such as attending a meetup and generating more opportunities. Looking at it from a sales perspective of how to spend your time - lead qualification, lead generation etc. Why spend a lot of effort on an unqualified lead?
Even trivial code is fine on Github. All I look for is that someone can actually write a bit of code, and a GH repo helps me quickly asses otherwise I have to do more digging. I've interviewed entirely too many people who are clueless and leave me wondering how they have ever had a job writing software.
> For those people who prefer FizzBuzz tests to implementing interesting stuff, I suggest companies provide the option to do a test for those who don't want to submit their project code.
In fact a great personal GH repo could be to implement FizzBuzz in a bunch of different languages. I think most companies would get an appreciate the joke.
Get them to talk about it in the interview
> Problem the 2nd: building and maintaining a non-trivial open source project is a huge investment of time...
Not really - in one weekend you probably can create something interesting and good enough for showing off to an employer. Also it will probably draw you in and you spend more time (for the fun of it) making it better. But you don't have to.
For those people who prefer FizzBuzz tests to implementing interesting stuff, I suggest companies provide the option to do a test for those who don't want to submit their project code.
> Good luck with that co-ordination problem.
A first stage could be that we say "no tests until at least an interview has occurred and the candidate has progressed to the next stage". That is in any candidates own interests regardless of other's actions - so wouldn't require coordination, just communication of the idea. It is in his own interests because the time spent on the speculative work could be better yielded doing something else, such as attending a meetup and generating more opportunities. Looking at it from a sales perspective of how to spend your time - lead qualification, lead generation etc. Why spend a lot of effort on an unqualified lead?