This is exactly how we do it at my company. The first interview is mainly for the candidate to get to know the company, products, tech. If we think there is a f

This is exactly how we do it at my company. The first interview is mainly for the candidate to get to know the company, products, tech. If we think there is a fit, we send them home with a coding task, choose 1 of 5, not expecting more than 100 lines of code, or more than a couple of hours (though all candidates have submitted more and spent more time). There is no time expectation, but they usually finish in a week or less. They then come back for a code review, walk the team through their code and explain it. This tells us a lot about their ability, but also their communication style and clarity, how they approach problem solving in general and even in which problem they chose. I chose this approach because 'coding under duress' during an interview does not offer a valid sample of what the candidate can do. Taking the time they need and working in a comfortable environment will give a much more realistic result. Coupling the take-home with an in-person code review weeds out those who may just Google up or borrow code from elsewhere.