This is 100% the "best" way to interview/hire a person. A small company who screens someone for basic competence, then does this is great. It does has its dra

This is 100% the "best" way to interview/hire a person. A small company who screens someone for basic competence, then does this is great. It does has its drawbacks though 1. Requires a significant time investment on your part 2. Isn't the most efficient -- if you have someone work a week on a project, and decide they're not a good fit, you just lost a week. 3. You can't really have multiple candidates for the same position coding at the same time. They would feel like they would be competing (and really, they would be) 4. For the reasons above, this would never work for a bigger company. By the time they are doing their week-long "trial", you should be pretty confident through screens anyway. Just ask yourself this -- have you ever said "no" to a person you've brought in to work on site?