I recently applied for a Frontend Engineer position and went through an online coding test as part of the screening process. Unfortunately, the coding environment provided was extremely basic – similar to Notepad – without any syntax highlighting, error detection, or formatting tools like Prettier.
During the assessment, I encountered a minor issue with a closing tag, which was difficult to spot without any visual cues or editor support. As a result, I spent extra time identifying the mistake and missed the deadline by just two minutes. I reached out to request a second chance, explaining the situation, but the HR response was quite cold and dismissive, simply stating that they could not send a second assessment.
While I understand the importance of time management in coding challenges, the lack of basic support in the assessment tool felt unfair. As a developer, working with completely bare environments like this is uncommon and does not accurately reflect real-world development scenarios. A more supportive assessment tool or at least a bit of understanding from the HR team would have made a difference.
I believe that improving the assessment process and offering a more reasonable response to minor delays would create a much better candidate experience.