Today I had an unexpected situation while I was interviewing a candidate for a developer role.
We normally start our interviews letting the candidate writing some simple code, in this case, the piece of code was to write a method that reverses a string. But today the candidate, after the time expired to do the test, complained strongly about this way of making interviews. I must confess that I was astonished, I couldn't believe that a developer complained about a test that requires he writes code.
After explain the reasons about why our company does this kind of tests, that this is only a small part of it and that we will never discard a candidate only because the result of the test, he argued that after 5 years of experience he doesn't need to do this kind of tests, since his CV already proves he is able to work as developer. So, he decided not to continue with the interview because it goes against his principles.
I understand that it can be annoying to make a test, when you go to an interview you are normally quite nervous and tired after a work journey, so it's hard to be focused in these situations and the results can be unpredictable.
As I said we don't discard candidates because of it, but I think it's a good start point and we only ask to do what a developer knows best: write code.
I have nothing to say about this candidate, he only followed his ideas. But, what do you think? Are you also against writing code during job interviews?