Take-homes favor career changers. You get time to think and produce quality work.
Best practices:
- Respect the time limit. If they say hours, stop at hours.
- Include a README explaining your decisions and tradeoffs.
- Write tests. Even basic ones show professionalism.
- Handle edge cases. Empty inputs, invalid data, etc.
- Keep the code clean. Comments where helpful.
Common mistakes:
- Over-engineering (building more than asked)
- Ignoring requirements to show off
- Submitting without testing
Career Changer Tip: Take-homes let you show your best work. Treat them like real projects, not coding puzzles.