I'm not a great fan of technical interviews with specific technical questions or coding exercises, probably because I feel like I probably wouldn't do well in

I'm not a great fan of technical interviews with specific technical questions or coding exercises, probably because I feel like I probably wouldn't do well in them so interview style may be self-selecting in that sense. What I'd normally do is ask someone to describe what they've done as if they can't describe it well then they're unlikely to understand it properly and I value verbal or written communication highly. I'd also ask them the technical and business reasons for that implementation and what could be improved. I'd start with something as simple as possible and hopefully build up. I'd perhaps ask them to describe a solution to a difficult but not impossible problem relating to their area of expertise. For instance in SQL I'd ask how to describe how one might write a report that looks like a calendar by selecting all dates for a year and grouping by month, day, week etc. This is something that might take a few hours if you haven't done it before, but you could probably describe the process. If I can't explain a problem like that in 10mins to them we're probably going to struggle to work together. I'd also ask them about any personal areas of interest. A lot of people in IT in the UK don't have any interest in it outside of work, which is kind of understandable. I wouldn't expect massive github repos or personal projects, but I would expect them to have technical "interests".