It's pretty common for companies to do contract to hire (enough so that recruiters will often just write CTH in their emails). This is a variation of that which

It's pretty common for companies to do contract to hire (enough so that recruiters will often just write CTH in their emails). This is a variation of that which seems a lot fairer than another approach I've experienced, which was a full-day pairing exercise which effectively translated to donating a day's work to the prospective hirer (admittedly, its value to them was relatively low since you were coming in with little knowledge or context, but its value to you is presumably non-zero).