Someone on here posted something about letting candidates pick an open issue on an open-source project and prep a PR for it, to go over. Easily my favorite version of a take-home assignment I've ever heard of—it's not throwaway junk or contrived bullshit, and I get to claim the PR if it gets accepted, whether or not you hire me, so while it's not paid it's also not a complete waste of my time if the job doesn't work out—but it's not repeatable the same way for every candidate (which is kind of the point? I mean selecting the issue to tackle is part of the assessment, which, as long as there's a little guidance about the sort of thing that's considered good-enough so you're not entirely in the dark re: expectations, seems ideal) so a certain kind of hiring manager or interviewer will think it's necessarily crap.