DBF Senior Developer Challenge

The DBF Senior Developer Challenge is a coding challenge for applicants to senior positions at the Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zurich. We think that it is fairer and more realistic to judge the capabilities of applicants with a small task, rather than asking theoretical questions about technical topics.

If you seek more information about us and what we work on at the DBF, check out DBF Join Us page!

Application Process

When you apply for a job at our department, you will:

• Part 1: Build a small React application 🤖
• Part 2: Answer four practically-oriented questions ✏️
• Part 3: Reflect on your work and the challenge :think:
• Finally: Send us the results of your challenge for a quick evaluation and feedback 📤

Everybody that completes the challenge with a good standard gets invited to a job interview. The challenge allows us to focus more on alignment of interests and your cultural fit rather than asking you a lot of technical questions 🔔 However, we will most certainly talk to you about the challenge and your responses.

Remember: It is okay to use Google to complete the challenge, you don't need to know everything by heart, and your solution does not have to be perfect!

Part 1 - Web Development

For the first part of the challenge, you will need to create a small React application based on a small pre-defined skeleton. You will be using React with the Next.js framework, as well as TailwindCSS for styling.

By solving this challenge, you demonstrate that:

• You can work with git and apply version control in your workflow.
  • You commit your work regularly and in clear increments.
• You know the most important principles of Web Development (e.g., HTML, CSS, and their respective Semantics).
• You can work with React and JavaScript libraries, even if they might be unfamiliar (e.g., using docs).
• You write understandable and extendable code (i.e., high-quality).
  • Your code is readable and well-structured.
  • You write efficient and simple code and apply programming patterns and abstractions where sensible.

Details and user stories can be found in Task 1. This task should take you about 1 hour to complete.

Part 2 - Quiz

Select four out of the five questions in Task 2 and write a short response (a few sentences each). You can edit the file directly, or add your responses to a new file. This task should take you about 30 minutes to complete.

With your responses, you demonstrate that:

• You have relevant practical knowledge about web development and computer science.
• You can understand the structure of a web application and use an IDE to support you.
• You can evaluate and form your own opinion about a technology/framework.

Part 3 - Reflection

Reflect on your work on this challenge and add your responses below, or save them in a new file. This task should take you about 15 minutes to complete.

• How did you approach this task? Try to formulate a few sentences describing your workflow and thought process.
• How did you handle the interaction with the backend/API? What library did you choose and why?
• How did you like this challenge? Is there anything unclear or anything else that we could/should improve?

Checklist

All done? Please make sure you have completed everything in our application checklist:

• Forked this repository.
  • Create a private fork if you do not want to make your results publicly available.
• Implemented the requirements for Part 1 and saved/committed your code.
• Answered the questions for Part 2 and saved/committed your answers.
• Reflected on your work in Part 3 and saved/committed your answers.
• Share the link to your repository and to the deployed application with us.
  • Invite rschlaefli, if you do not want to make your repository publicly available.
• Submitted the application form on joinus.