Submitted resume/cover letter online and got an immediate reply with request to take an online assessment (Pre-Screen) via CodeSignal. It was required, even for managers (which I agree with). I checked out CodeSignal and it is a tool similar to LeetCode and several others. They offer a practice round and strongly encouraged everyone to check it out before the actual Pre-Screen. I took the practice round and became familiar with the IDE for JavaScript. It was unusual with multiple ways to look at output and test results but a bit noisy. It presented code as proper JavaScript ES6+ which was great. I became familiar and got accustomed to the IDE, albeit quirky.

Couple days or so later, I sat down to take the real Pre-Screen. For the test, CodeSignal presented me with a completely different IDE than the practice round! It appeared to be an JS ES5 environment. Bait and switch! Initially, and much importantly, I was unable to find the JavaScript console. It was nowhere to be found, looked at every screen artifact multiple times. I had to start the test completely in the blind, unable to debug any code. Later, I accidentally stumbled upon the console 2 clicks away under a test dropdown.

Bottom line, I ran out of time for the Pre-Screen and got an embarrassingly low score. The exercise was trivial but time consuming to implement. Unfortunately, diddling with the replacement IDE took valuable time away from test. I contacted CodeSignal. They filed a bug and later acknowledged that the practice and Pre-Screen IDEs were in fact different for my sessions. Regardless, I lost a great opportunity at Circle.

I'm only sharing my experience here as a heads-up to anyone who might also be required to take an online assessment using CodeSignal, at Circle or elsewhere. I'm sure they will fix the bug that caused the issue for my case. Unfortunately, based on my experience, I cannot ever trust their service again. They only get one chance to make a first (trustworthy) impression.