I'd love to give some (hopefully actionable) feedback on my experience with this quiz. I didn't feel like I had a great experience. Some of that was just me, of course - but not all of it.

First of all, when I received it, I immediately began to wonder why I was applying through Hired. I get it - you want to tell your clients that you gate the talent so that their risk is lower.

However, the value proposition for your candidates seems to be "a dignified process to interact with interesting potential employers". Because the gate was kept by an antique computer science questionnaire, you removed that experience completely for me. I felt no dignity.

Just to be frank:

• My ability to write binary search algorithms (which I have never professionally needed to do) has no bearing on my ability to ship software (which I do constantly).
• On the other hand, something which is super relevant to what I do day to day is write clear, maintainable code. BTW, doing this lets folks tolerate occasionally writing a bad algorithm - because maintainable, changeable code can be refactored for performance when needed.
• There is no human element. You really can't learn anything about a candidate without any amount of individual interaction. I'm sorry, but my problem solving skills will never be apparent on an automated quiz report card.
• The way the problems were phrased were obtuse and very difficult to understand. It was like reading dense textbook recitation. When someone in real life phrases a problem to me like this questionnaire did, my response is usually this: "Wait. Back up - what are you actually trying to do?"
• If your test is a poor communicator then you can be sure that you've failed many more perfectly viable candidates than I imagine you think you have.

This actually happened:

I "solved" a few of the issues in Ruby, and then eventually encountered a problem where Ruby seemed to just not be fast enough.

I turned to Google. I refined my algorithms based on others' advice. Still I would fail, and fail. Eventually I copy-pasted identical solutions from other languages, like Java. And it worked despite being algorithmically correct.

Honestly at one point I felt like popping open the console and seeing if your machinery was causing me to fail - like maybe you were doing some sort of asynchronous operation and the client introduced enough latency for a failure.

So, to recap, my decision to build answers in Ruby was technically permitted, but your system rejected it over and over again because it was not fast enough. Ruby, in your questionnaire, would not be fast enough. Either that or the algorithm in Ruby should have been substantially different from other languages.

But why would that be the case, I wonder, in a questionnaire with such a clear focus on discovering formal computer science training?

In the end, I felt stressed and aggravated about being put in the position of taking the quiz. The problems were not relevant to my years of experience and I felt seriously disadvantaged - even more so when I discovered that by cheating and pasting the identical algorithms from other languages, I could pass your assertions.

I did a stint at Starbucks for a few years and we had a phrase, "Set each other up for success". It means that if your colleagues fail in your company then you should seriously question if your support / lack of support had anything to do with their failure. This speed question is a perfect example of setting some of your candidates up for failure.

I can't overstate this: Removing or dramatically changing this gatekeeper test is a huge opportunity for you. You are risking losing candidates, disappointing clients, and losing money every time you apply it to an otherwise perfectly viable profile.