why this testing craze? (Score 1)

Microsoft, I think, got it started for testing fresh graduates. Why? Because, as another commenter points out, there's a lot of cheating in college, and there are people who graduate with computer science degrees who simply aren't that sharp as coders.

Also, most employers have clammed up on references; many supervisors are prohibited from saying anything at all, good or bad. Even back in the 1970s, there was a reluctance to say anything bad, for fear of lawsuit. References are just not that useful anymore; hence tests.

As I point out here, my first experience with this was a bit disconcerting. As I point out here, I believe that the reason that it was so difficult was that I hadn't been on a job interview with strangers in a long time, and I wasn't expecting this.

Nearly all my jobs to that point were with people that I had worked with before, and who knew my skills. They had no reason to test my capabilities. The problem I have now is that almost everyone that I have worked with in the past retired in their 30s and 40s, obscenely rich, so it isn't so easy to find a job anymore, and my current employer just laid off hundreds of software engineers--while advertising for what seems to be H-1B visa software engineers. I'll take the test; the alternative is not being employable.