Eighteen months, and the same shape nearly every time: a screen, then a puzzle. The candidate, two years into their career, kept losing roles to coding exercises — not to the work they would actually have been doing.
The opening that finally broke the run was different in one specific way. It was a company that asked the candidate to show their skills the way the job itself would: by doing the exact work they would be hired to do, instead of solving problems invented for the interview.
They got the offer — for an intermediate role, no less. The candidate’s summary was almost a shrug. All it had taken was one company willing to look at the real thing.