Basically the attitude was "take this exam first, then we will talk" which I found somewhat pretentious, but I accepted since they tried to convince me that it is a "cool" place to work. I did some research and it seems like they are post-startup and have various videos and images of a relaxed work environment, but I guess I was turned off after two failed schedule exam invitations. It seems they had a change in coordinator, emails to/from different people, etc so the impression I got was that they are disorganized and they still would not speak to me until I took this exam. So after 2 weeks, they finally sent me the exam and it was a basic Java exam around sorting, data definition/model, etc and basically write up code within 2 hours.
I could understand having someone take an exam if they are college hires, junior positions, etc but someone with a senior role will find this almost insulting; plus this is for a SALES DEMO position, so it should be more customization than raw coding. Granted you do not want to waste time bringing in people who are NOT technical, but I think any senior engineer does not feel like taking a test unless there is a certification or money exchanged afterwards. You could easily have a conversation and gauge a person's skill level, but it seems they are too "busy" to talk to people and instead have them take a test to help weed out non-engineers. In reality I was just curious because I did not know what to expect, since I have only taken an exam once in my life during a job interview and now in BOTH cases I walked away.
I basically closed the empty exam and politely thanked them for their time, but I think any company that bases their hiring practices on an exam without speaking to you are setting themselves up for failure because they will only hire the same "type" of people every time. Anyway, I am actually somewhat grateful, because it just helped me affirm that I do not want to be in coding-only environment at this point in my career since I do more than just crank out code. My only advice would be for them to clearly state in ANY and ALL job descriptions whether or not an exam has to be taken beforehand as this might help both parties avoid wasting any time and will force them to rethink their hiring practices.