I Failed My Coding Assessment and still got an Offer — Here is how it happened

Coding assessments have become very popular in recent times. A friend of mine who works at IBM was totally clueless when I asked him about how he prepared for their backend software engineering coding assessment, because even though he interviewed for the position merely a few years back, he did not have to do a coding assessment as they were not part of IBM’s application process. Well, IBM and a lot of other companies have since adopted this assessment style as part of their interview process if not their first screening for technical applicants.

Companies have a mark that applicants must hit in other to move on in their application process. For some companies, this mark might be passing all test cases while others might consider other factors beside the number of test cases passed. Regardless of what metric a company uses, it is rare for an applicant to advance to the stages after the coding assessment without passing any of the test cases, or so we’ve been told.

I have experienced just about any of the situations one can find him/herself in with a coding assessment. There have been times when I passed all the test cases on a coding assessment and still got reject (read about it here). There was also a time when I didn’t pass all the test cases in a coding assessment, advanced to the next level, and even got an offer! (Read about that here). The shocking of all? The time that I didn’t pass any of the test cases but still advanced to the next step in the application process for a company.

Before I explain why this was possible, let me clear the air. I did not apply to this opportunity with a referral!

Why didn’t I pass any of the test cases?

Just like many students, I had been using Leetcode and Hackerrank to prepare for coding assessment, and if you are familiar with either of these platforms and ones alike, then you know that the function that calls your code to run the test cases is written for you. Your only duty on these platforms is to type in your functions to solve the problem given, you do not need to worry about how to call the test cases. It’s also worth mentioning that I wasn’t experienced in taking coding assessments.