Any test can fail in two fundamental ways: false positives and false negatives. The primary purpose of a screening test is to filter out unqualified candidates

Any test can fail in two fundamental ways: false positives and false negatives. The primary purpose of a screening test is to filter out unqualified candidates (that is, to not certify as qualified someone who is not). The process Joel describes is very effective at this. Your complaint, essentially, is that it will incorrectly label as unqualified some qualified candidates (or that they will elect not to submit to the process, essentially putting themselves in the no-hire pile). I think Joel would tell you that this kind of error is much less costly to an organization than the other kind. Suppose he relaxed the constraints enough to get you to pass (we'll posit that you're in the false negative group). This would necessarily imply accepting some lower-qualified candidates who would have been filtered out before. Is the company better off now? Do you think you are that much better than the people they were getting under the old system to risk also hiring lower quality candidates?