Yes, we can. Don't do them. But, we have to replace them with something that works. That means none of these poorly constructed take home projects that are almost universally either drastically over scoped, criminally under specified, or both.
We don't. The simple solution is to stop maintaining the illusion that 100% perfect hire is possible.
Design your post-hire process around imperfect hiring rate / quick feedback loop, and accept the losses (they will happen anyway despite any perfectionistic illusions you choose to maintain).
These are few questions that really matter:
- Is there a track record of delivering meaningful results?
- Does their past experience seem credible?
- Are their soft skills and communication skills up to your expectations?
- Do they demonstrate adequate hard skills for the role?
- What interests and motivates them on professional and personal level?
> We don't. The simple solution is to stop maintaining the illusion that 100% perfect hire is possible.
I just don't know what a better proxy of coding ability even is, when we exclude options that can't be gamed/cheated.
If someone can present a good solution and talk about the reasoning behind it with enough detail & savvy to convince you that they actually wrote it, does it matter if they didn't?
And that is my point: there's a difference between someone pushing forth slop, and someone who is simply not doing the actual labor but could if they wanted to do so.
The catch would be not knowing whether the interviewee has the AI cargo cult PRIORS