Otdfbt

I got an interview call from a company after a friend referred me for a vacancy in his team. The call was from a team manager and not any HR personnel.

One interview for this week, Monday, was scheduled.

Since my current employer does not support WFH (work from home), I scheduled the interview for the morning and informed my manager that I would be running late. After waiting for a good half an hour I came to know through my friend that the person who called me was on emergency leave.

Three days later (yesterday) without any warning they sent me a coding test to complete within 24 hours.

This was on Thursday: yesterday.

I had a release the next day (i.e., today) and unknown to me I had to work overtime yesterday.

I didn't get any time to complete the test, and the link expired.

(I feel the company should have asked me about my availability before sending a test like this especially on a weekday.)

How should I reply to them now?

Yes, it was unexpected and should have happened in a better way.

However, you did one mistake here, you should have immediately responded to them declining to take the test (exactly the reasons what you've said in the question). However, if you still did not communicate anything after receiving the email, it's still not too late, take action as soon as possible.

Reply to them in a way which:

• Lists the previous incidents happened (uninformed cancellation, no heads up etc)


• Still shows a positive attitude to resolve the issue and get going forward


• Sounding confident and not desperate for the job.

Something along the lines of:

"Hello, I'm sorry to inform that I could not complete the coding test you sent me.

However, at the risk of sounding like an excuse, let me also add that the previous interview which was scheduled did not take place, without any prior information. The follow up test, also showed up without any prior notice, thereby I could not take proper actions.

I sincerely expect to have the interview / test re-conducted and the timings to be confirmed well in advance this time so that I can plan my work accordingly. Please let me know when is a good time to discuss about the availability and put something in the calendar so it works smoothly for all of us.

Regards, Somya"

In case they comply, you can go ahead. However, if they do not seem to receive the response well, it's a red flag about the company culture they maintain, where time is not valued. I'd think twice then before making progress on associating with them.

The more time that passes, the worse this looks.

The ideal case would have been to respond immediately to their test request:

I am very sorry, but I was not aware from my previous contact with your
company that I would be required to take a test today. Due to my work
situation (give more details if there are urgent deadlines, etc...), I
will not be able to take a test until the weekend. I would be glad to
take a different test if you feel that that would be more fair to the
other candidates.

If you have had no contact with the company since receiving their test request, then the above is still a valid response. You could basically pretend that you did not see their email.

If you acknowledged that you received the test request, and simply did not do it, then you are in a very bad situation. Anything you say at this point will come across as an excuse. If you are an average candidate for them, then I think your chances of getting the job have dropped to 0. If you are an above average candidate, then they might grant you forgiveness.

FWIW: I am in charge of hiring for several positions in our company. We also give a prescreening test to candidates (although we typically give 1 week to complete). I am glad to delay the test if a candidate tells me that they are busy over the next few days. However, if we agree on a timeline for the test, and you simply can't be bothered to do it, then I simply can't be bothered to give you a job. There are deadlines in industry. If we agree on a reasonable deadline, and you do not meet that deadline, then what does it say about how you will perform in my company.

Off course it is common courtesy for them to ask if you could spare some time for the exercise especially that it was not indicated you've have to do one earlier in the process. It would raise some eyebrows with me and definitely count as a negative when evaluating options (for the reasons others have mentioned).

Looking past that though, it depends on how much you want the job. I've had this happen to me a couple of times and I replied right away indicating I'd not be able to make the deadline but offered a new time instead.

If the task is vague or you aren't sure how long you'll need - do ask if there's a timeframe in which they expect the exercise to be done (reasoning below).

Hi so-and-so,

Thank you for the exercise. I look forward to the challenge. I reckon I will need 3 hours to complete it however I am caught up with some blah-blah-blah today and will not find good time in which to work on it. Do you mind if I completed it and came back to you on Friday instead?

I notice there isn't a mention of how much time should be spent on the exercise - please could you give me an indication?

This is kind of important to do and in itself shows them how you can manage expectations amongst a busy schedule, be open in your communications, etc. Usually they understand and appreciate the pragmatism. If they find this unacceptable, then yes you really ought to reconsider working for them.

For the reason behind deadlines like this - It's often the case with homework exercises they don't want you to spend more than an allocated time and hence the short notice. i.e. If you took the weekend to complete what should be a 2 hour exercise, sure you're going to come up with something quite polished that does not accurately represent your skills and abilities - especially against other candidates do only take 2 hours and Hiring managers need to make decisions with this constraint as a factor. This is even more reason to indicate upfront that you need a block of time. Here I would make use of Github or similar that shows the timeline of all the your work on the exercise (as well as how you branch, commit, test, refactor, etc, etc). You could point this out to the interviewer.

It sounds as though you've missed the deadline now so perhaps do something similar in retrospect?

I really do apologize. I thought I would have had some quality time to focus on the exercise but due to unforeseen blah-blah-blah I found I couldn't complete it on time. I've included a link to the github project showing the approach and how much time I took, etc - I hope this suffices in this form. I look forward to your feedback.