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> Most candidates were struggling by task 9.

Make the test 5 tasks long.

Good advice. The steps were kind of tedious to read. Maybe just trim it to steps 6-11, which still tests HTML/CSS knowledge.

- make a 10x10 grid of circles, center it in the page horizontally and vertically

- alternate the colors of the circle

- have them switch direction

- animate, etc.

Sorry, I should have explained. I didn't give them a list of tasks at the start; the format was more conversational and I verbally walked them through the list.

The reason I did it that way was to give several easy "warm up" questions at the beginning to get them comfortable.

I like your idea of combining several of the first steps together though -- I may try that and see if that's more or less stressful for the candidate.

I'm honestly amazed anyone can keep focus on menial questions past the third one. Is this really a normal practice? None of the hiring interviews I've taken part in had these. They had maybe one practical problem (that was abstract but not especially difficult) that you could solve in ten minutes of back and forth.

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