I like the gist of this (I think take-homes are the best way to evaluate a candidate), but making it time limited seems weird. You're basically taking a test that you haven't studied for -- that doesn't seem fair (or fun).
What is an interview if not a test? The code challenge portion of an interview process is a test that you've been studying for your entire career.
As for fairness, I'd argue that timing it is the only way to ensure it. This way you know that the playing field is level between you and the other candidates applying for the role.
To fun, I'd say that the least fun thing I can think of in this context is spending days wondering whether I had "done enough yet" in order to make my submission stand out ahead of the other applicants. Much more fun to know that as soon as that clock ticks over, what's done is done and I can get on with my life for better or worse.
An interview is not a test. An interview is a two-way conversation to determine fit for both parties. No test can possibly match human intuition.
In my experience on both sides of the desk, a more holistic approach yields better results in the long run. A resume scan, then a review of presented code, then a phone screen to determine communications ability and check some boxes, then a short series of in-person conversations with the team to determine "can we work together?"
How does your approach differ from the sites being already used by companies for online coding test? They do the same thing, you login during some fixed duration(24-48hr) in the weekend, and you do the coding challenges(they have a web interface to compile your code) within the alloted time.
I think the main difference is that those sites are geared towards outputting a ranking or score of some time. Takehome is geared at giving you a way to qualitatively assess the skills of each candidate and give you something meaningful to discuss with them in a follow-up interview.
Also, all of the existing sites I've seen have one or more of the following problems:
* Make you use their editor
* Make you install their software on your computer
* Make you use some specific language
* Make you use their set of challenges
Takehome uses nothing but git. Whatever you put in the repository and how you get it there is up to you.
That holds true both for the candidate and the challenger. Takehome encourages challengers to create their own task matching the kind of work/language/framework/etc that's relevant to their team.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind as much if they gave hints at what the problem might be so I could study for it. A day to prepare for a one hour coding test, that might be fun.
