> "The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids"
> Is 4 hours the amount of time the candidate is being given to complete it, or roughly how long the employer expects it will take? In the past I've generally come up with tests I know can be done in an hour or so (2 tops),
Have you actually given these assignments to some of your colleagues and asked them to complete and how long it took (including setting up the development environment ...)? People are notoriously bad at estimating time it takes someone else to do something that oneself is intimately familiar with. So I would not be surprised that the assignments took more like 2-4 h, if you add the additional time for context switching, organising to free your schedule etc..
> but allowed 24 hours, exactly because not everyone is going to be in a position they can dedicate those 2 hours to it right there and then.
I don't think the GP was implying that the assignment was to be done right there and then, where and when would you do those 2 h in their schedule?
> Sure, those that did take the full 24 hours to complete I tended to apply higher expectations towards when judging,
So for someone with kids etc., who couldn't do the assignment straight away you actually expected more than 2h worth of work? To me that's already a red flag that you don't respect peoples life-work balance.
> but at the end of the day it didn't make much difference - the tests were only to weed out those that had clearly made a poor career decision (and there were surprisingly many of those, to the point we switched to testing before interviewing).
Unless you offer exceptionally high salary or are a highly desirable place to
work at, you are likely not getting the best applicants.