"The company replaced the whiteboard exercise with job talks, a practice that’s common in academic settings. Candidates now talk at length about about specific

"The company replaced the whiteboard exercise with job talks, a practice that’s common in academic settings. Candidates now talk at length about about specific projects from a previous gig. The change has had a few benefits—interviewers now have a chance to query candidates about how they collaborated in other jobs. It also turns out that coding tests aren’t as objective as they sound, says Joelle Emerson, founder and C.E.O. of Paradigm, a consulting firm that works with tech companies on diversity. By putting candidates in situations that are outside the way they normally work, Emerson says, whiteboard interviews increase the likelihood of “stereotype threat,” an anxiety among non-traditional candidates that they’ll confirm negative stereotypes about their group." So let me understand this. Whiteboard interviews don't reflect a standard engineering work flow, but giving a series of presentations to strangers does? Writing code on a whiteboard can cause "stereotype threat", but a extremely subjective "tell me about yourself" interview wouldn't? Let's be honest here, zymergen hasn't stumbled upon any great insights. They just decided that they wanted to hire a lot of women, and people with experience, and then they did just that. They got rid of any objective interview style that might get in the way, and they instead used a very subjective interview style where candidates performance can be reinterpreted to fit the results they want to see. Hiring is an extremely tricky thing, and I commend these guys for actively recruiting a neglected demographic. From a moneyball perspective, it's a smart strategy. But in terms of interviewing insights, there's nothing new to see here.