Most of the time, this is the first step in a software developer recruitment process. For most developers out there, this is the last step as well, because they make silly mistakes.

During my career, I did them a lot of times, and now I can share my tips and thoughts with you fellas about how you can avoid doing them.

To make sure you will stand out from the other candidates, you need to make an as best first impression as possible. To succeed, you need to do everything you can to get to the next step.

Sometimes, this “everything” is too much, sometimes we forget about something, we don’t do what we should have to do, so in this post, I’ll provide a quick formula that you need to follow.

1. Understand the task

Read it multiple times.

Say it out loud and understand what they want from you to make sure you don’t miss anything and lose points, which can lead you to fail the submission as most candidates do.

There’s always a chance that even if you make only one mistake, you can say goodbye to your dream job, which can be frustrating.

2. Do what they say

If you don’t do what they want from you, you’ll probably fail and not pass the exercise.

Do what’s written, don’t go beyond that, because you can risk not getting to the next step of the recruitment process.

If you don’t understand something, and if you have any doubts, don’t hesitate and ask questions.

3. Always ask questions!

A different employer wants different things from you, so you need to make sure that you don’t misunderstand something or do less than they expect.

From my experience I know, that even the easiest thing to do can make you fail the exercise if you don’t do it.

So, you’d better not be afraid to ask.

4. Test it, test it!

Test your submission, and check it in every possible way, such as:

• cross-browser compatibility,

• RWD,

• design,

• contrast,

• SEO,

• useless comments,

• commented code,

• hard to read code,

• errors,

• poor Lighthouse score

There are more things to take care of before submitting it, but I listed I think the most obvious ones.

Keep in mind that even if the brief doesn’t mention the responsiveness, make it responsive. Brief doesn’t say to test it in the Internet Explorer? Test it.

Conclusion

Nothing should be perfect in programming, but this process has to be as flawless as possible. Even if you struggle to land that job after reading that post, don’t let the defeat stop you from learning, because there’s no defeat at all.

One thing I know for sure, there’s always an experience.

Thank you for reading, have a great day!