I think something like this would again be a significant step in the right direction. (& I appreciate your creative effort to come up with constructive solutions, here & in your previous comment!)
I’m less excited about your second paragraph, though. For the jury to have the effect I would want, I’d want them to be able to scrutinise small grants to individuals.
Following other commenters here, I’m heavily pro work tests, but always advocate strongly for (what I believe to be) fair compensation. If organisations are having you do major unpaid (or e.g. minimum-wage) work trials, that seems like a serious problem.
There are also two broad categories of paid work tests I’ve seen, and I think the distinction between them is important:
The first is standardised “trial tasks”, in which every candidate is given an identical task that functions like an exam. These are typically purely for assessment and have little to no practical benefit to the organisation; they also typically come earlier in the process.
The second is an on-the-ground “work trial” in which the candidate works closely with members of the hiring org over one to a few days. These trials more commonly involve work that’s useful to the organisation, since the goal is to see how the candidate works in a more realistic setting with their potential new teammates. These typically come later in the process.
In my opinion, both of these should be paid, with the importance of providing payment increasing with the length and arduousness of the trial. I also think (2) should only be used with a small number of finalist candidates the org is genuinely excited about. If an org is instead giving these kinds of trials to significant numbers of candidates with lower probability of hiring, then I agree that seems quite problematic, especially if the trials aren’t fairly compensated (the need for fair compensation also creates an incentive to be selective with the candidates that get asked to take a trial, which I think is helpful for reducing the concerns raised here).