At my current workplace we also administer a technical test. It is designed to take less than 15 minutes and this is communicated when it is sent out.
It consists of a small chunk of code in Java/C#/Go or otherwise that has some obvious and other not so obvious mistakes. The candidate is asked to point out any issues they see in the code.
It takes them 15 minutes to do and about 15 minutes to review the response, which I feel values time on both sides.
That could be an even more efficient version of our test. As long as it screens for what you're looking for, I would definitely agree that shorter is better.
It feels like it tests something different than writing code, though both may be a proxy for "quality candidate".
It consists of a small chunk of code in Java/C#/Go or otherwise that has some obvious and other not so obvious mistakes. The candidate is asked to point out any issues they see in the code.
It takes them 15 minutes to do and about 15 minutes to review the response, which I feel values time on both sides.