They gave me a large bundle of code and told me to "optimize" it, without having any kind of clear guidance as to what that meant. The code was nothing I would EVER have in a production environment. Poorly written and way too diffuse. The boss then had me in a virtual interview and had obviously not read my responses at all, asking me to go over them with him. As a programmer my door is being pounded upon by recruiters constantly and it's not like I'm going to take a lot of time to assess such a terribly composed bundle anyway, and this kid made me feel like he expected a computer science college project out of it. They also seemed incredibly desperate for organization skills but also for control over their situation and I could tell they REALLY didn't want to trust anyone to shine the team up for them. Word of advise: Don't hire for a role you aren't ready for. And your managers are too young to understand what they're really doing, you might want to fix that.

Multi Step First there was a call with the HR rep to review the role, make sure I'm interested, a good candidate, and schedule the next. Second, had a meeting with a future peer to discuss the company and check for culture / personality mesh with both the company and team. Third, was sent a homework pack with a couple of questions and sample code. This was honestly my favorite part because it actually simulated how work item requests work. Was given a few days to improve or fix the code as outlined in the 5 questions as well as writing out how to handle the specific scenarios. Lastly, had a meeting with the hiring requestor to review the homework and any other lingering questions.