How about instead of a contrived take-home project or doing unpaid "real work" for the company, we ask candidates to do n hours of work on an open source project?
That's real useful work, if we don't hire them they can show it off to a different hiring company, and it makes the world a better place.
That's real useful work, if we don't hire them they can show it off to a different hiring company, and it makes the world a better place.