"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), 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.
Sure, those that did take the full 24 hours to complete I tended to apply higher expectations towards when judging, 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).
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), 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. Sure, those that did take the full 24 hours to complete I tended to apply higher expectations towards when judging, 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).