Even back in the dark ages of IT I did not take any tests. No siree no free samples. I let my resume do the talking. Of course there were very few H1B’s back then and employers could fire you at will but I (not some third party) could negotiate my services to the highest bidder. And I made sure to keep up to date and marketable to ensure that was possible.
Here’s what is really weird. Modern IDEs(interactive Development Environments) like Eclipse for java for example, are designed to take the burden off of the developer. It helps with syntax, so much so, you lose the need to memorizes every little syntactic nuance. When you make a new class it will create a main for you and stem out the program. As long as the IDE is not flagging errors on any of the code, it compiles. So by using modern development system you are ruining your interview skills. It is a catch 22.