How I Failed A Technical Assessment For A Remote Job For A Switzerland Based Company

I was looking for something to do since I was at home sitting and doing nothing, then I started hunting for Jobs, later on I came across a remote job for a top company in Switzerland, The company is a Fin-tech Company and applied for the Role of a Penetration Tester, I sent my resume, and after about two days, I received a mail from the HR that they are looking into my resume and they will get back to me.

After some days waiting for their mail, I received a mail for an interview and the date and time will be schedule about a week to the mail if it’s fine with me, and which was fine with me.

I started preparing for the Interview, Learn more about the Company, Their Culture and so on, Learn about the Founders and how much the Company has raised since it’s a fintech and likely to be from a Startup and so on, and waiting for the day of the interview and time, From a Country I am, Nigeria, Power Supply would likely be an issue for me, So I make sure my PC was fully charge and not used, and make sure my internet connect was fine for the next day.

I was prepared 10 minutes to the call and then I received a call from the HR, He was nice, And ask me some questions about my background and so on, He asked me about the company and so on, Then later on about me, Like work, Trustworthiness, and so on, That I should rate myself, Which I gave myself 10 of 10 :) , Then he said he’s fine with me and if there’s any questions I have for him, And we talked about the time of work like 9AM-6PM, Which is 8AM-5PM in Switzerland timezone, Just an hour difference. And he said they will get back to me.

After two days to the Interview, I received a mail that there will be a Technical Interview, And it schedule to be a week after the mail, Date is fixed, An the Technical Interview will hold for an hour, I started preparing well for the Interview thinking what they might ask and so on, In the Job Post they didn’t specify what kind of role they are looking for exactly in the Penetration Testing like Web Application Penetration Tester, Mobile Application Pentester, I shifted my focus on Web App Penetration, Keep digging and learning what likely might be asked for that of Job Role, I already did Mobile Pentesting focused on Android and which was written inside my Resume and likely that is the reason I was considered at first, So I was waiting for the Interview.

I received a mail that day on the link for the technical assessment which was hosted on hackerrank and I opened the link and have an instruction that I have one hour to complete the task, So I click on start and a Single Question Pop, Find A Way To Do An SSL Pinning On The Company Application and the time start right immediately, I already have about 3 Android Emulators on my Genymotion on my PC, Then starting the work, I immediately went to Google Playstore to find the Company App, I couldn’t find the App because of my location, it’s not available for Nigeria, So I had to download the App through a third party websites.

I immediately start reversing the App and looking for possible ways to do SSL Pinning, All the methods and tricks I know couldn’t do that, I started looking for other ways since I have an hour to do everything and make a reports and together with the App, Then one of my emulator crashed with nothing to say, I am having 8GB RAM on my PC and I made sure nothing was running to disrupt me while working, then the other emulator crashed without nothing also, They crashed without even booting up, So I have one emulator to go with, I kept finding ways to Bypass the SSL Pinning but time wasn’t on my side, With the ways I could.

I later make a reports on my findings and why i wasn’t able to make the reports, when making the reports I knew something was wrong because I felt there should be another way, After sending the reports and after some days, I received a mail that:

Sorry, That after reviewing my reports I couldn’t meet their requirements, That they are others candidates that meet the requirements and so on, If there’s another position for the job in future I would be notified, I felt bad because I couldn’t pass the technical assessment but it helped me in preparing for future jobs.