Man, Taiwanese hiring managers really don't respect your time

I heard back from a job I applied for and they’re asking me to complete a four-hour test before I even get to the first interview. They expect me to do this when I know nothing about the company outside of what’s on their website, the work environment, the compensation/salary… nothing. Do Taiwanese hiring managers not understand that the interview process is as much for the interviewee to know if they’ll be a right fit for the company as it is for the interviewer? Do they not understand that the best and brightest are inundated with requests for job interviews on LinkedIn all the time and if they’re in the market for a job then they’re probably too busy with other applications and weighing up competitive job offers elsewhere to be spending four hours to pass a test to get onto the first stage of the interview process of a job for a company they know next to nothing about?

Very strange. I’m sure they think this is a very clever strategy to ensure they only spend their valuable time interviewing the very best, but it must surely put off plenty of highly qualified candidates, particularly those of us who can easily get a job elsewhere…

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I wouldn’t be bothering with that, personally.

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FTFY

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This isn’t specific to Taiwan, I just did this for a job in the UK and I didn’t get it anyway.

From a recuiting company point of view, interviewing someone who can’t hack the assessment is a waste of time, and there is a lot of applicants who either lie about their experience or don’t know anything at all about what they’ve applied to. The assessment is effective in weeding that stuff out, without costing lots of internal resources time.

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They do this in the tech industry now too. Not specifically Taiwan I should clarify. ‘Take home’ assessments that can take a whole evening. Such a load of crap.

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What job is that? and what seniority level if I may ask?
i have seen this requirement for entry level jobs in very large companies (Asus) because its part of their cookie cutter process.
I have seen something similar for consulting roles (where the test was a case study, but not 4 hour long, more like 1 hour, and after an initial phone interview).

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Unless they are paying you over 120k NTD a month, don’t bother with the test.

Also don’t bother working for a Taiwanese company. It’s too easy to get a remote gig at the moment.

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Did they reply to you letting you know you weren’t selected? Seems not replying these days is the new black.

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This is more reasonable. I’ve also seen (and given) assessments like this in the UK. Four hours seems excessive in any situation, but it’s especially bad if the candidate hasn’t even been given a chance to assess anything about the company first. It just seems disrespectful to the candidate if you ask me. I see others here may beg to differ, but I find it hard to believe that would fly in London.

It’s a technical writing role. It doesn’t specify the seniority, but I get the impression from the job interview that it requires somebody with some experience.

There’s no way I’m going to spend an entire afternoon doing this. If I had an initial interview and got a good vibe, I might consider it because I really want to go back to Taiwan…

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They did, yeah. I was surprised they did, to be honest.

Usually I assume that if I haven’t heard anything after a week then it’s gone (if i haven’t forgotten that I applied in the first place)

A lot of them now have these online portals. And your application status will be visible in there. Probably an excuse to not do the human thing and contact people.

To be honest, I haven’t had any luck finding a remote job that would actually let me work from Taiwan. My current job is letting me go temporarily because I kicked up a stink about it, but I doubt they’d let me do it permanently. Have you seen any of these remote jobs yourself or is this just speculation?

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I’m a big proponent of take-home evaluations for programing jobs, but they’re the final stage after screening and interview, and candidates are paid consulting rates for the time they spend on it, whether we end up making them an offer or not.

Even then it can be hard to get people to do them, which I can understand, but interviews are almost useless, so …

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It beats the white board grilling. But I’m seeing recently the take-home is being used as a screening tool for the first interview.

Didn’t you go through the same in the UK? I’ve never seen a place where they treat candidates this way in the UK with the assessment centers and all the testing to even be considered. It’s one of the most annoying processes I’ve gone through.

I’ve recently recruited some new staff, only 3 positions, so nothing big… still looking for another 2-3 people

In defense of what you have experienced, I have interviewed people, and you would think that I had the wrong CV/Application in my hand… truly a waste of time seeing some of them.

I’ve used direct advertising, like 1111, local recruiting Agencies, and Global Recruiting Agencies (these guys charge quite a large amount for their services!). Currently I can say that the large international recruiting agencies have come up trumps! They preselect well, and only offer those truly suited to the position. My last appointment was made through this method.

So in fact I can see some justification in requiring such a first stage introduction.

When I recruit people I need them to commit to me at least as much as I commit to them - I want them to proactively join a team, and to be ready to work hard to build a career for themselves inside my Company.

Honestly speaking 4 hours commitment to invest in a Company that may employ you for 20 years, and to help you grow and advance, and to increase incomes (Corporate and Personal) together is not so big a commitment.

My remaining few open positions are more junior positions, so I’m not using the ‘big boys’ to help me find these candidates.

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Sure, I get this. And I appreciate your input coming, as it were, from the “other side”. But don’t you think four hours is an unreasonable ask for someone when they don’t even know anything about the company yet and they need to go through all of that just to get a taste of what it might be like? And do you think my point that these practices will just put off those of us who are highly skilled and can easily find a job elsewhere?

When I was hiring, I picked all candidates myself based on their CVs and then gave each of them an initial phone conversation, which was just as much for them to ask me questions as for me to ask them questions. Only after the initial phone conversation did I give them a test, which I think was an hour-and-a-half. If they then passed the test, they’d be invited in for the more formal “job interview” with other people on the team. Nice and simple three-stage process.

There’s being careful and then there’s being flat-out disrespectful. And I think the disrespectful option would end up hurting the company more than benefiting them.

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Why don’t you just tell them you’d like to have a phone conversation first to learn more about the position, and if that goes well you’ll consider doing the test? Seems like you’d be wasting your time to agree to do it at the moment.

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Yes, 4 hours is a bit extreme - personally, I’d not ask potential candidates to do such a thing. For me personalities are the key to selecting best candidates, even for technical positions. But, I therefore still interview non-starters too frequently.

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At least they told you the salary. It’s becoming common to ask you your salary expectations even as a response to you asking for the salary range. Sometimes it’s laughable.