My wife's employer instituted a similar policy: instead of a qualification requirement, they now ask candidates to do a lengthy take-home exercise. Her experie

My wife's employer instituted a similar policy: instead of a qualification requirement, they now ask candidates to do a lengthy take-home exercise. Her experience is that, if anything, it's actually damaging for accessibility, because in practice the candidates who have the confidence (and possibly outside help) to do well are pretty well exclusively the ones with traditional backgrounds, a sense of entitlement, and high grades from good institutions.