Our strategy is to save the take-home for after the in person interview, and to pay you for the time (up to the limit we expect), then a follow up to talk about the work.
I'm about to start applying to new positions and it sounds like I won't get the same courtesy, but only you can decide if your enthusiasm for the position matches the opportunity cost of the interview process.
Can you really justify my contractor rates though? My time isn't cheap, and I don't work until the down payment has cleared.
All a take home test does is eliminate your strongest candidates, since they generally won't bother. It has to be a truly extraordinary position before anyone with significant experience will waste their time trying to compete in this market. Keep in mind my opportunity cost while job seeking is networking. Every minute I waste on someone's takehome is time I could be tayloring my resume to another position or emailing with prospective employers, which makes them all the more expensive to waste time on.
shrug offering pay isn't meant as an insult, but to show we value your time. If we can't afford your hourly rates, we probably can't afford to offer you a salary you'd be happy with.
Considering I'll have to pay all taxes, medicare, ssi, etc. on all self-employment income and that the time I spend working on your challenge is time I'm not spending chasing other business, the contractor rate that I'm going to charge you is likely going to be around 300-400% of what I expect my salary to be for that time.
If you can't afford that, I'll probably think you're either exploitative or delusional or both.
But then again, your 6 hour programming assignment is worth about $1500+ of my time.
We take a salary because we want to offload risks and time spent doing sales to source our income, but we shouldn't have to do throwaway work for free to get that. Sounds too much like 'unpaid internship' to me.
I'm about to start applying to new positions and it sounds like I won't get the same courtesy, but only you can decide if your enthusiasm for the position matches the opportunity cost of the interview process.