Take-Home and Project Interviews
Take-homes often measure what whiteboard interviews miss: code quality, architecture, testing, and communication.
The scoring rubric (usually)
- correctness
- clarity and maintainability
- tests and edge cases
- reasonable architecture and tradeoffs
- documentation (how to run + decisions)
How to respond (high leverage)
Before you start:
- confirm time expectations and submission format
- clarify ambiguous requirements
- ask about evaluation criteria
While building:
- keep the scope small and solid
- write tests for the “core” path
- add minimal observability/logging
Delivery:
- include a short README: setup, run, test, decisions, tradeoffs, next steps
Common failure modes
- too much scope, unfinished core
- no tests
- no error handling
- unclear instructions to run
If you’re time-constrained
Prioritize in this order:
- correctness
- clean structure
- tests
- docs
- extras