Honestly, it might be easier to adjust the hiring process. If the hiring process were able to easily select driven individuals who retain "software engineer" as part of their identity, and people that take pride in their work, seek constructive criticism and want to learn, then that would be good enough.
I should also clarify that being self taught isn't necessarily a bad thing (one of the best coworkers I had was self taught), lacking any of the above traits is.
I'd argue that if a test could select good SEs then companies would be giving tests (or outsourcing such tests) as part of their interview process. It's not like a lot of thought, effort and experimentation hasn't gone into figuring out how to hire software engineers.
>Honestly, it might be easier to adjust the hiring process. If the hiring process were able to easily select driven individuals who retain "software engineer" as part of their identity, and people that take pride in their work, seek constructive criticism and want to learn, then that would be good enough.
I'd like to note that a test would not select for any of those things except the ability to study hard.
Also maybe a lot of people are self conscious about no formal education as well? That wasn't an issue for me but I imagine it is for some.
TL;DR: The transition from learning the hard way always, to allowing someone to try to prevent it is tough.
For example, get them to explain a model they would use to represent user login. Then get them to explain how that would link to their use info. Then how they would display that on a login screen. Then how they would save that into the database. Anything to watch out for? Any security concerns?