I generally start by asking about their story. While in the story, when they start talking about their experiences, I ask questions to figure out how much of th

I generally start by asking about their story. While in the story, when they start talking about their experiences, I ask questions to figure out how much of their resume is padded. [Almost everyone pads their resume and the junior the developer the more the padding. Its a personal opinion though]. Once thats done, I ask a system design problem and try to solve it together. Eg. Lets build Facebook newsfeed today! Go as deep as possible and try to solve it "together" as you would be working together and not against each other. This results interesting hacks/stories from candidates. Then I ask about the toughest problem they solved and go as deep as possible with the details. Finally, I ask "why us?". Take ~2 hours if the candidate is exciting or less if not.