I did a weekend exercise for a company once. I didn't care for it. I felt like I was wasting my time when I could be doing something I wanted to do instead, but I wanted a new job and they seemed decent.
However, before they had time to review it and get back to me, another company interviewed me and offered me the job and I took it.
From the other side of that, we now give these assignments when hiring. It has virtually eliminated the bad candidates, and we've hired a few good junior programmers for a change.
However, neither of those 2 situations paid anything. They were throw-away projects that the company couldn't actually use to avoid any legal issues. If we were going for experienced programmers, I think I'd recommend the payment route. But junior programmers? We got too many applicants to send it to all of them, and so we'd end up pre-filtering them like we used to do, which makes the process less valuable.
However, before they had time to review it and get back to me, another company interviewed me and offered me the job and I took it.
From the other side of that, we now give these assignments when hiring. It has virtually eliminated the bad candidates, and we've hired a few good junior programmers for a change.
However, neither of those 2 situations paid anything. They were throw-away projects that the company couldn't actually use to avoid any legal issues. If we were going for experienced programmers, I think I'd recommend the payment route. But junior programmers? We got too many applicants to send it to all of them, and so we'd end up pre-filtering them like we used to do, which makes the process less valuable.