Sure, but keep in mind people have busy schedules.
Recently a startup I was somewhat interested in required a 4-5 hour coding project that was similar to the labs I do in school. I'm already bogged down in work interviewing, doing normal classes, writing a senior thesis, and preparing my research for publication.
I decided to forget about the company and look elsewhere, for I already had offers from great places like Google and Facebook and could always fall back.
I'm not saying its bad to screen candidates with interesting puzzles. I'm saying that you risk filtering out the better candidates that just don't have time to deal with puzzles from a company they don't know.
Additionally, keep in mind that I come from a competitive university in the academic world (although I figure competition is pretty bad at most universities). Thus, with my current 100 hour work weeks, I would just rather not bother with solving tedious puzzles.
Recently a startup I was somewhat interested in required a 4-5 hour coding project that was similar to the labs I do in school. I'm already bogged down in work interviewing, doing normal classes, writing a senior thesis, and preparing my research for publication.
I decided to forget about the company and look elsewhere, for I already had offers from great places like Google and Facebook and could always fall back.
I'm not saying its bad to screen candidates with interesting puzzles. I'm saying that you risk filtering out the better candidates that just don't have time to deal with puzzles from a company they don't know.
Additionally, keep in mind that I come from a competitive university in the academic world (although I figure competition is pretty bad at most universities). Thus, with my current 100 hour work weeks, I would just rather not bother with solving tedious puzzles.