A fair take-home brief: hard time cap, published evaluation criteria, compensation policy, submission format, and the debrief conversation the assignment feeds.
Send this brief to candidates who advance to the take-home stage for {{Role title}}. A fair take-home respects three constraints: it is small enough to finish inside the cap, its evaluation criteria are published up front, and it never extracts free work. Assignments that violate any of these lose strong candidates first — the people with the most options are the least willing to do a vague, unbounded project.
{{Two to four sentences describing a self-contained, realistic task drawn from the kind of work the role actually does. It must not be a live business problem your team currently needs solved.}}
Stop when you hit the cap, even if it is not finished. We evaluate what you prioritized inside the limit — an unfinished solution with clear reasoning outscores a polished one that obviously took a weekend. Tell us roughly how long you spent; honest answers are never penalized, and submissions that clearly blew far past the cap are scored as if scope had been cut to fit it.
| Criterion | Weight | What strong looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Approach and prioritization | {{Weight, e.g. 30%}} | Chose the highest-value slice of the problem; cut scope deliberately and said so. |
| Quality of core work | {{Weight, e.g. 35%}} | The central piece is correct, clear, and would survive a colleague's review. |
| Communication | {{Weight, e.g. 20%}} | A short write-up explains decisions, trade-offs, and what you would do with more time. |
| Judgment on the edges | {{Weight, e.g. 15%}} | Knew what to ignore; flagged assumptions instead of silently making them. |
Not legal advice
This template is provided for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Laws differ by jurisdiction and change over time — have a qualified professional review any document before you rely on it.
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