Update 2023/10/31
Just received an email with an ugly refusal.
I completed two online assessments this morning, one for the Backend Engineer Grad Hiring Test, powered by HackerRank, and the other for the Data Science Test, powered by Alooba. These assessments consisted of fundamental questions with time constraints. Although the questions were objectively not very difficult, I found them quite challenging. I think it’s mainly due to the lack of practice, as most local companies here do not include such assessments in their hiring process. I had not retained the knowledge since I would often forget it straightly after each final exam in the university.
Backend Engineer Grad Hiring Test
There are 3 coding tests in this test, with a total of 60 minutes to be the overall time limitation. It confuses me the most is the Java-only programming language option. It looks like mastering Java is a mandatory requirement for Canva. I haven’t intensively used Java for several years since I graduated from my bachelors degree of study. Although I could remember basic syntax, data structures, and algorithms in Java, I still can’t do anything without the help of ChatGPT :(
- The first question was something like “Given n request ids as an array of strings, requests, and an integer k, after all requests are received find the k most recent requests”. and I got through half of the test cases.
- The second question was something like “Given n workers and efficiency for each worker, find a configuration of the workers such that the cost of the task is the minimum possible, return the minimum cost as the answer”. and I only succeed in 4 test cases.
- The third question was something like “Given the graph g, find the maximum time taken to transfer the data between any two servers in the system.” I constructed a TreeNode object and ask ChatGPT to generate a DFS algorithm and surprisingly, I passed all test cases. Honestly I reckon this could cause some problems, but it is what it is, I don’t care anyway.
Data Science Test
The data science test is relatively comprehensive. It has product analytics, Python, SQL, statistics, data literacy, data analysis, reports & visualisations, and chart interpretation. Questions were multiple-choice, SQL-based coding, Python/R-based data analysis on given datasets. I only got 45/100 overall score :( and I still can’t do anything without the help of ChatGPT :(
