I've been giving interviews for almost a decade now and I've both tried and seen many different approaches. Yet, I think the MOST important part of the 45-60 mi

I've been giving interviews for almost a decade now and I've both tried and seen many different approaches. Yet, I think the MOST important part of the 45-60 minute time slot I get with a candidate (or future coworker), is the conversation. 1) I want to see passion for solving problems in the space. There are endless problems to solve in the industry, but I want to know they'll be excited to work on my team's problems. 2) What are they doing here? Was this a numbers game (interview at a ton of different places in hopes of getting one good offer)? Were they recruited or did they actively seek this position out? I've seen candidates where in one interview I have to throw multiple problems at them, because they think about it for 30 seconds and then come up with a correct solution and quickly write it out on the board. I'll usually run out of questions for these candidates. Ultimately, white-board coding works well for some, and is a complete disaster for others. Yet I don't believe it means white-board interviews should be thrown away in an effort to be "fair." I just think as engineers, if we really want to land a position at a Google, Facebook, or Uber, etc, is it too much to ask that we study up on our algorithms?