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Comment by wolfgke | Hacker News Reader

> Between having to endure a "stupid test" and have to shelve a wad of cash just to get a very expensive piece of paper, give me the stupid test every single time.

Why not go fot the idea that one pays the cost in advance, but as soon as you get hired, the future employer will repay the costs to you?

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Because paying is the problem, and expecting that prospective employers would pay for your expenses for a test that is used to infer basic competences is at best wishful thinking.

We only need to look at the current state of qualification mills/moocs to get a good idea how job seekers would be fleeced by these so called certification systems.

It's far better to get in front of a prospective employer and solve whiteboard problems than just be a number in a clueless HR drone's database.

> Because paying is the problem, and expecting that prospective employers would pay for your expenses for a test that is used to infer basic competences is at best wishful thinking.

I am cautious with this kind of statement, since this saves the respective company time to check these competencies by itself, which is a pecuniary advantage for the company (since it can obiously use this time to earn money).

I imagine a 2-3 hour test that costs something like $200, which seems like a reasonable investment, if many or most employers are looking for it. For the companies, it would save an hour or two of interviewing. If they accepted the test as indicative of basic coding sanity, they could then focus their interviews on more general or domain-related skills.

> I imagine a 2-3 hour test that costs something like $200, which seems like a reasonable investment

Nowadays you get the same result or even a better one by spending zero to do the prospective employer's test. It is not an investment nor it is reasonable. Companies already dump preliminary screening on specialized HR companies.

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