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Publicis Sapient
NCR – DELHI,NOIDA,GURGAON Publicis Sapient is hiring for the Automation Selenium with Java role
Exp: 6-14 Years Notice Period: 1 month / 45 Days / immediate
Location: Gurgaon, Bangalore, and Noida
Skill Requirement - Strong programming skills in Java and selenium - Proficient in writing SQL queries -
Experience in designing and development of automation framework -
Understanding of SOAP and REST principles
Kindly share resume at sushobhan.sahu@publicissapient.com
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Proud of you for taking a stand
I did the same with Plaid when interviewing for a strategic finance role. Assignment was insanely detailed and easily would have taken 20 hours.
This is probably wishful thinking, but I hope that if enough people do this, it will make companies reign in their take homes a bit
Can I ask you a few questions? I was also approached by a recruiter regarding this role.
This needs to change about the industry. It's a dumb filter
Am i the only one who thinks this is a bit snowflak-y? I’m not sure how ‘exploit’ comes into play - are you giving Plaid something in this process except some pages of first principles thinking?
Let's play the story from Plaid's end. This is a company that had a 2x valuation bump in the last 24 months and after Visa, is looking at a 4x valuation bump in private markets. Each role in the company probably has 200+ applications. What's a better way to weed out the people who think they're doing the hiring manager a favor by gracing them with their presence? Is it to talk to the 100 applicants or put them through a series of hoops to see who flakes?
Thinking in your shoes, is it perhaps red carpet treatment that you expect because you were referred by the co-founders friend?
M2 - I’m glad I don’t have to worry about working for you... If your measure of will is whom ever is willing to devote the most hours - well I guess anyone with a family/kids, volunteer commitments, demanding work requirements, etc must not really want to work there enough. And the fact that you highlighted the valuation upside as the reason you would be willing to go through these hoops - well that’s enough for me to screen you out on hiring. If you want to trim the pool, raise the bar on who passing through the existing rounds of interviews. You mentioned wanting to give “everyone” a fair chance as a reason to support this process. I think it provides more chances for some in exchange for less chances for others. And I agree with others comments - this process results in both biased and negative self selection of candidates.
Mentor
No offense to anyone by Plaid, but if I were them I'd trust the fact that McK had already vetted you pretty thoroughly. Their loss because if they are doing that type of goat rodeo during the interview cycle, they are only going to attract the second and third-tier candidates.
How’d they react?
I feel like they should do a case and a behavioral or two up front then stop. 4 interviews plus a case after that is ridiculous
EY2, we do four 30-40 min case interviews. It is not the same as take home assignments.
My hubby from BCG was interviewing with a company and they asked him to work on a question for two weeks and then present to their C-level executive. Free BCG project? He said no thank you and dropped from the interview.
Good for you OP!
Enthusiast
Yikes
These assignments need to end. The terrible part is that the reviewer typically spends 5 minutes or less looking at the final assignment.
Additionally, the dirty little secret is that not everyone applying for these types of roles is asked to do a take home. I applied for a BizOps role and wasn’t asked to do one because “they knew I could do the work” but my friend was from consulting.
1. What do you mean by 1 week? 40 hours of FTE work?
2. Good job standing up for yourself. These time consuming practices won't change until companies see they are missing out on too many candidates.
Maybe they meant it takes a week to do if you do a bit here and there after hours. Not full time. Unless they told you it takes a week to do, from 8-5
FTR, I’m an EM, 3 years at McK + 2 years in FANG prior
Did you not ask about interview process upfront? Or they didn’t tell you that stage 4 was going to be a take home case? Feel like this sort of thing shouldn’t come up as a surprise
OW1 in my case too, the take home was pitched as “brief” and “a few slides” up front. When it was actually sent through, they said “spend roughly 10 hours.” When I read through the assignment, it became clear it was at least a multi day / ~20 hour effort.
Bro you’re getting used. I’m sure you know that. They are extracting your insights for free, legally. It’s the open secret in the industry.
Enthusiast
OP, how’d they respond?
Agreed I just switched jobs and did about 5 case studies totalling probably 80+ hours of work. It's a good filter to see who either a) has too much time on their hands or b) who has just had enough of the bs to do 10 hours of case studies on top of a 70 hour week.
TY for naming 🙌🏼
The moral of the story is to start a hip new company, be secretive to increase "prestige", get a bunch of skilled people desperate to interview, give them production data to crunch as an interview case, then ghost them. 😆
Good luck OP...I applied for that biz opp role, guess I’m not getting it haha
Following up on this, has anyone successfully pushed back on the take home case (without ending the interview process)? And how did you do it?
I recently started interviewing in Tech (Strategy, finance) and take home seems to be a common step of most interviews.
One other potential option is to get to the 1-2 hour answer and wing it on the presentation
“Here’re several areas I would explore in more depth, given additional time.”
Yeah a week’s worth for a take home is abuse.