Alternatively we could come up with a better system for interviewing. Instead of concentrating on being able to remember algorithms and write them out in a comp

Alternatively we could come up with a better system for interviewing. Instead of concentrating on being able to remember algorithms and write them out in a completely non-normal way (white board) we could, instead, give them a very small project to do then have them come in and explain it, walk someone through extending it and / or work through a problem together. You'd get real experience seeing how they write their code, work with others and their ability communicate. Drilling someone to do tree traversal or various Big-O exercises doesn't exactly come up in the real world. Yeah performance and understanding data structures is important but that's why you give them something real, see what kind of data structure they come up with and why and go from there. Well at least in my opinion. I've interviewed a lot of people and have been interviewed myself. I've unfortunately haven't been able to gather the data to see how effective my method is BUT I like it a hell of a lot better.