Using some test like this to rate applicants probably only points out a weakness in communication skills, but is better than just slamming through random resume

Using some test like this to rate applicants probably only points out a weakness in communication skills, but is better than just slamming through random resumes. A well-written cover letter should easily answer the first two (and listed as most important to twilio in the article as the folks building the team) points listed. I think it is also entirely NOT scalable. What if you get 1000 submissions? In my area of the world (Research Triangle Park in NC) there is a company that famously gets hundreds to a thousand of resume and cover letter submissions per SW dev opening, especially when the job market is tight. One healthcare software startup I knew about was getting so many resumes for open positions that they developed a policy of trashing resumes received after 9AM on any given day. Just to keep the piles manageable. How can that be effective? But maybe a bulk of the applicants to the positions mentioned in the article clearly just shot a resume at a job listing with no further effort demonstrated? Can we get some numbers on how many applicants just sent a resume versus attempting some of the "extra" work you asked for? I've thought for some time that the best thing an applicant to a job could do would be to provide a portfolio of code (or website or demo) that clearly shows finished projects and results they have achieved previously. But that could be a pretty intense process on the employer side - how do you review even 50 of these portfolios in a meaningful way if each one is even small code samples (say 2K lines of code)? Then the employer and candidate could sit down and talk through the design choices and schedule trade-offs made on that code. Plus, using previously written code completely punts on the idea that you might prefer a really smart hacker who is inexperienced in some technology instead of poor developer who has spent a career in that technology churning out mediocre work. My guess is that the hackers who would care enough to actually have a code portfolio out there for employers to see are probably a cut above the average software dev type anyway. Maybe this is my startup - given many portfolios of hacker's work, how do we make it effectively searchable by employers who need to find good matches? There has to be a good web app out there for this - recruiters get big percentages on candidate placements, so there is clearly some potential market. I don't have any data to back up this supposition, but don't we think that recruiter candidate placements can be pretty closely approximated with some data mining given a portfolio of work and simple heuristics? An additional problem is that many hires are made via personal networks - it's just easier to say, oh yeah, that person worked with our friends who were really happy with his/her work on that project, we should think about bringing him/her in. The problem of hiring and finding great candidates has been bubbling in my head. But I haven't had any blinding flashes of inspiration for really great solutions - any thoughts out there?