I've heard that before, and if we felt there was a significant risk we were putting off good devs from applying, I'd reverse that decision. But I like to think we made our tests a fun & interesting enough challenge that applicants were happy to spend the time doing them.

This might be fine for hiring juniors but I can't imagine many experienced applicants would be interested in gambling their time away on your test before any interview.

Actually I've never been heavily involved in hiring a junior. Even at my own level (>26 years prof. experience) I'd happily do a test before a formal interview (though I'd likely want a brief chat with someone from the company to get a feel for what sort of shop they run first). And I would be judging the employer on the quality of their test.

Lol read the responses here, you're kidding yourself.

I've read some. Doesn't align with my personal experience is all I can say. I can't remember a case where a candidate refused to do such a test, or that we never heard back from after letting them know that was our policy.

That's because those qualified candidates already saw enough proxy signals from you that they knew it wasn't worth the time to apply. Selection bias.

Possibly, but we introduced the policy simply because too many candidates were using up our time with interviews where they appeared to be knowledgeable etc. but then quickly demonstrated with the take-home test that weren't going to be a good fit for us. I'll be honest, there weren't really enough data points to take any grand conclusions from the experience, and this was all pre-covid etc. I'm moving to a new role soon and I'm expecting to get back into being more actively engaged in screening new hire candidates etc., so I'm sure I'll learn more as I go - some of the points raised in this forum have definitely given me pause for thought.