On the one hand, I this is borderline hazing and I hate it.

On the other, I've seen the backend of my company's HR department. We get tons and tons of what amount to spam-submissions. Little more than fishing attempts by recruitment agencies, independent consulting firms, and spam-marketing firms that are just trying to valid email addresses from anyone in the company to respond to them.

This is maybe one step up from the "Click Here To Prove You're Human". Because it's some soulless corporate policy, it pushes the burden of validating your humanity as far onto the individual applicant as possible.

It's also a very underhanded way to filter out people based on appearance, language skills, and disability.