I reviewed around 5000 candidates last year for TypeScript frontend and backend positions. Global, remote only. I received ~600 applications for an Angular position in one week.
The hiring percent was below 0.5%. There are a lot of candidates, but most of them could not fulfill our core requirements a new team member must be able to accomplish. In our case it was TypeScript itself, unit tests, integration tests, working in a Linux environment. Salary requirements for the same position varied $1000 - $20000/mo. Because there is a lot of supply side (read: developers available), one can be picky.
"Some candidates asked for an interview without completing the exercise. Unfortunately, this was not an option, as this would not be fair for the candidates who worked hard to get to the interview."
This is just how I look at it, but if I reply to a company about a position, I'd like to know about the position before you make me jump through hoops. The exercise itself is okay, and a brief test like this is much, much better than making a candidate fill out an assessment, but why would I invest that kind of time if I don't even know whether or not I want the job. Think about it from the candidate's perspective, some people in this thread note having done 10s/100s of interviews. Imagine how much time they would spend doing menial coding exercises before even getting to know about the actual position other than the JD.
Again, its probably just me, but last year I literally thanked companies for their time because I didn't know anything about the job and their company and they were already asking me to do take home assignments. Sorry but I have a life, and critically to anyone who's hiring; plenty of people reaching out to me not trying to make me jump through hoops. Maybe if you invited more than 24 people for the exercise or just spoke to some people first, you would've gotten a better pool of (potential) candidates.
The position was described upfront on the application page, so you know what to expect. Also, some candidates took the initiative and asked questions. In fact it was even encouraged.
I wrote another post for another position later which has more juicy details like country breakdown
Somewhat related, In the interview, the first question I asked if the candidates had tried to sign up on the website and what they thought about it. It is not encouraging if a candidate had not tried to figure out the company product himself/herself at all.
Interestingly, the exercise is so boring (add authentication to a website with tests and documentation, for an outdated framework like Angular) that it probably selects out people who want to have a somewhat interesting job in addition to those who are incompetent.
The hiring percent was below 0.5%. There are a lot of candidates, but most of them could not fulfill our core requirements a new team member must be able to accomplish. In our case it was TypeScript itself, unit tests, integration tests, working in a Linux environment. Salary requirements for the same position varied $1000 - $20000/mo. Because there is a lot of supply side (read: developers available), one can be picky.
More details and statistic here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hiring-remote-angular-nestjs-...