Take-home projects: the best and worst use of my job-search time
Interview assignments taught me more than any screening call — and cost me more than I expected. What I'd do differently if I started the search today.
After refocusing my search, the interviews got better — more of them were in areas where I actually want to work. But they surfaced a new challenge: being senior in one area and less experienced in another, and watching the interview zero in on exactly the part where I'm weakest.
You can prepare for a lot. But I've made peace with the fact that, to a large extent, which topic an interviewer happens to care about is luck. The same profile can look like a strong senior or a risky hire depending on which third of it the conversation lands on.
Where assignments changed the picture
Some interviews required demonstrating a project, and — against my expectations — I found this a much better use of my time than reciting my CV for the tenth time.
That's why I built a project specifically to show that I can apply dbt to a real problem, running in a real cloud environment — not as a bullet point, but as something I can open and walk through. Building it taught me more than any amount of interview rehearsal, and unlike a screening call, the result doesn't evaporate when the conversation ends. It's mine, and it works for every future conversation too.
You can check the result yourself: a live Looker Studio dashboard benchmarking European IT salaries and job demand, with the code on GitHub.
There's a hidden bonus: assignments tell you a lot about the company. The task they design reflects what they actually work on and what they consider important. A thoughtful assignment usually signals a thoughtful team; a vague or bloated one is data too.
The cost nobody mentions
The honest downside: assignments are very time-consuming. While I was deep in one project, I underprepared for other opportunities running in parallel. The job search is a portfolio of bets, and a take-home project quietly eats the time budget of every other bet you've placed.
If I were starting over
One lesson stands above the rest: target the area you want to work in from day one, and build a project for that area — before the interviews force you to. I spent my first weeks recapping everything broadly. Targeted effort — one domain, one demonstrable project — would have compounded much faster.
Why I'll keep writing these
I hope to keep documenting this whole process, because it's turned out to matter beyond recruiting. Writing things down forces me to track my own progress and evaluate how I spend my time — something the standard end-of-year review at a company never really did. There are more interests to balance than a career: family first, then professional work, hobbies, community. Getting the distribution of that time right is, as far as I can tell, most of what a happier and more meaningful life comes down to.