[gingerrr]

I understand the reasons why the company would choose to do it. My argument is that they are fixing the wrong problem - and to be honest, could likely be making it worse.

If so many unqualified candidates are making it to the phone screen (which should happen after they've been resume-sorted and google searched), it's an indicator that something at the leading edge of the candidate pipeline is broken.

Asking their potential candidates to make up for their failure is not only asinine but probably locks them into a cycle of mediocrity - highly-skilled engineers are getting more leads than they care to deal with already, they're not likely to take the time to do that upfront work unless there's a very compelling draw. You know who will? Untrained devs looking for a first job.

tl;dr - the candidates that would do unpaid work for the chance of an interview, and the highly-skilled, well-sought-after engineers I'd like to hire for my team, are likely two circles without any overlap unless I have some major draw working in my favor - like signing bonus, or being a Google.

edit: accidentally a word