> Currently we’ve switched to a short (15-30m) technical problem that we hand grade before candidates get a call.
Funny because I do the same; I don't commit to doing any work/assessments before at least an honest interview round. Businesses have to understand that _they_ are the ones who have to solve for the filtering problem. Most great candidates that you are hoping to snipe are already in a stable job and do not _have_ to jump through hoops to get past a filter.
We’ll skip it based off other signals (referrals notably) of course, but if we offered an interview to every candidate based off their resume we’d never get around to interviewing the good candidates. I don’t like the idea of a technical challenge at the start, but as someone who was discovered way back via skills and not a fancy resume I want to continue offering others the same chance as me.
I have done programming assessments, but I've probably only done 3 in the last 20 years, and those I strictly limited to 1 hour and told the recruiters that I wouldn't spend any longer than that.
I've also flat out refused to proceed with least 5 jobs when recruiters have contacted me, tried to tempt me with a job and then sent through a 3 hour coding test. I've got better things to do with my free time than toy programming puzzles.