Test Assignments, Chatbots & Hiring

There's an ongoing debate in the tech hiring world:

 🔹 Should senior candidates be asked to do test assignments?

 🔹 Do test assignments still make sense in the era of chatbots?

Some believe that if you're hiring a senior, their experience and CV should speak for themselves. Others argue, and I agree, that for hands-on positions, at any level, a test assignment remains a valuable tool.

Here's why:

Hiring is expensive. But hiring the wrong person? That's far more costly.

You invest your team's time, onboard someone, start relying on them, only to realize the skills aren't there. And then you start over.

A well-designed test assignment can help both sides avoid that.

It gives the candidate a chance to show what they can do in practice. And it gives us a chance to evaluate real, not assumed, skills, before either of us wastes precious time on a mismatch.

But then comes the "what about chatbots?" argument.

 Yes, someone can use chatbots to solve their task. And you know what? That's not a bad thing.

If you can:

- Use LLMs to speed up your work

- Understand and evaluate the output

- Polish the result and deliver high-quality work fast

It's surprising how many candidates submit weak assignments that could have been significantly improved with even basic AI support.

Are they afraid we'll "catch" them using chatbots?

Do they feel like it's cheating?

Because from where I stand, not using modern tools when they make you more efficient is the bigger red flag.

Do the test. Use the tools. Let your work speak.