I would argue that some of your "solutions" to these "common mistakes" are just as bad as the initial mistakes themselves. Whiteboarding: Why would you replace

I would argue that some of your "solutions" to these "common mistakes" are just as bad as the initial mistakes themselves. Whiteboarding: Why would you replace a whiteboard with a pen and paper? Many programmers have hardly touched a pen and paper in years. They live and die by their keyboards and monitors. Would you take a master carpenter's tools away and then judge them on their ability to build something using nothing but a spoon? Maybe we should give people a real world problem (not a trick problem), and let them solve it using their tools of choice? Staged Collaboration: "Design your interview question to be missing important details. This will give candidates the opportunity to discover the need for these details when they get to them and ask for them at that time. If the candidate never asks questions, great! You just identified a serious red flag you would have been hard pressed to find otherwise." When someone is in an interview under pressure, they are often very nervous. They are being judged on how quickly they can solve a problem, and you (as the test giver) are the authority in the room. Focus tends to narrow under stress. This means many people will simply take your questions at face value. But it sounds like you are essentially penalizing them for not being cynical enough, and you are penalizing them for not understanding that your trick questions are trick questions. That doesn't really seem fair. It sounds like a good way to weed out timid candidates (and potentially lose out on a very talented engineer), though. Conversational Relationships: I agree with this Open-Ended Discovery: I agree with this