The issue there is the problem starts to become unbounded for the candidate; they can't tell what you're looking for, so they don't know how to prioritize their time.
That's a problem even if you have reasonable expectations yourself, because the candidate probably has experienced some tests where the expectations haven't been reasonable. For a (real) example: marking candidates down for not having an analytics integration.
How does your candidate know that's not important to you, even though it was important to the last company?
> testing your experience, not your literal skill in pumping out code
Past a certain point, it gets much more efficient to discuss experience in an interview setting. Good coding tests should be designed to test the skills you care about most to produce a strong hiring signal for the next phase - it's difficult to showcase a full decade's worth of experience in 4-8 hours' worth of coding challenge.
> Anyone can pump out code
I've found that to be depressingly untrue amongst a significant percentage of engineering applicants.
That's a problem even if you have reasonable expectations yourself, because the candidate probably has experienced some tests where the expectations haven't been reasonable. For a (real) example: marking candidates down for not having an analytics integration.
How does your candidate know that's not important to you, even though it was important to the last company?
> testing your experience, not your literal skill in pumping out code
Past a certain point, it gets much more efficient to discuss experience in an interview setting. Good coding tests should be designed to test the skills you care about most to produce a strong hiring signal for the next phase - it's difficult to showcase a full decade's worth of experience in 4-8 hours' worth of coding challenge.
> Anyone can pump out code
I've found that to be depressingly untrue amongst a significant percentage of engineering applicants.