---
id: I-006
type: intervention
title: "Strict Take-Home Timebox & Blinded Evaluation Rubric"
lang: en
registry: 2026.08.2
canonical: https://hoba.work/interventions/I-006
json: https://hoba.work/api/v1/interventions/I-006.json
---

# Strict Take-Home Timebox & Blinded Evaluation Rubric

Enforce strict 3-hour scope limits on take-homes, compensate candidates for extended samples, and grade submissions blind.

> **On the canonical path** — [Assessed on the work, against a rubric that is shared](https://hoba.work/process#WF-003-work-sample)
>
> One timeboxed exercise that resembles the job. The candidate is given the criteria before starting, the timebox is enforced against the evaluator as well, and the same rubric scores everyone.
>
> This entry is one of the things that holds that commitment up.

## At a glance

- Actor: hiring manager
- Scope: organizational
- Cost: medium
- Evidence: supported

## What it looks like

Composite excerpts, written to be typical rather than copied. No particular message, company or person is quoted here.

**The brief and the review record, both bounded** — *reconstruction*

```
Subject: Take-home — Senior Backend Engineer

> Scope: one endpoint with persistence and tests. Hard timebox: 3 hours. Submit whatever you have at the three-hour mark.
  Anything beyond three hours is paid at our contractor rate; tell us in advance if you want that option.
> Review: submissions are anonymised before grading and scored against the published rubric by two reviewers, minimum 20 minutes each.
```

*What to notice* Both halves of the asymmetry are addressed at once: the candidate hours are capped and the reviewer minutes have a floor. Capping only one side moves the problem rather than closing it.

## From each side

The same entry from inside each position that meets it: what reaches them, what it means from there, and what happens next given what they control.

### Hiring manager

- **What reaches them:** A brief with a hard cap, submissions with the names stripped, and two review slots per submission on the team's calendar.
- **What it means from there:** Reviewer minutes acquire a floor where they had none, and the loop is scheduled in advance rather than fitted around the week as it comes.
- **What happens next:** Sets the scope so that three hours produces something gradable, and accepts the smaller sample as the evidence the hire is decided on.

### Candidate

- **What reaches them:** A stated scope, a hard timebox, a rate for anything beyond it, and a published rubric the submission is graded against.
- **What it means from there:** The hours are knowable before starting, and the grade is a scored artefact rather than an impression formed in a five-minute scan.
- **What happens next:** Submits what exists at the three-hour mark instead of competing on hours, and weighs the task against the other processes in flight.

### Employer policy

- **What reaches them:** A request to pay a non-employee for an extended work sample, at a rate, on a contracting route.
- **What it means from there:** Paying for a sample is a procurement and classification question before it is a hiring one; an unpaid task raises neither.
- **What happens next:** Defines the rate and the route, or does not — and where it does not, only the timebox half of the intervention ships.

## Expected effects

- Prevent reviewer fatigue and asymmetric code evaluation
- Respect candidate time investment and eliminate IP exploitation concerns

## What to measure

- `take_home_completion_rate`
- `inter_rater_rubric_correlation`

## Related entries

- targets — [M-019](https://hoba.work/mechanisms/M-019) — Take-Home Evaluation Fatigue & Asymmetry
- targets — [L-002](https://hoba.work/loops/L-002) — Take-Home Opportunity-Cost Saturation Loop
- targets — [B-006](https://hoba.work/barriers/B-006) — Take-Home / Work Sample Evaluation

---

hoba — a public, versioned atlas of hiring obstacles. Content CC BY-SA 4.0. This document is generated from the registry; the canonical page is linked above.