I interview, on average, two people a month for non- or semi-technical roles. Everything from financial analysts to contracts specialists and project managers.

I interview, on average, two people a month for non- or semi-technical roles. Everything from financial analysts to contracts specialists and project managers. Interviews are generally structured to give interviewers a good idea about four items: 1) What did you, personally, work on previously that's relevant to this role? This usually means pretty in-depth discussions about previous roles and projects, accomplishments, tasks, skills gained, etc. 2) How do you approach tasks and problems at work? This is usually a combination of asking about why the candidate did things a certain way previously and how they would approach theoretical situations in the future. The goal is to uncover the mindset the candidate uses to actually get stuff done in a changing business environment. 3) How do you interact with teammates and managers? This is the concrete version of "culture fit" and includes asking about various interpersonal situations likely to have been encountered in the past as well as discussions about how the candidate would handle quirks of the office environment at the new company (ex. some companies love people to make decisions quickly on their own while others hate it and mandate team consensus). 4) Do you have the base-level skills needed for the role? This is often far more than the technical aspect. After some basic questions to establish that the candidate knows the basic processes, software tools, artifacts, and terminology, it's much more important to establish if they have the chops to actually be successful rather than a "task completed" robot. Can the candidate communicate ideas and opinions clearly? Did they previously work in a collaborative way rather than an adversarial way with teammates? Can they present findings and issues to management effectively? Have they previously worked with supporting teams and vendors outside their main role to solve problems? Etc. In most jobs the technical skill part is a small piece of what the person will actually be doing so the interview is a means to collaboratively establish if the role is a fit for the candidate as a whole and vice versa. If I only looked at technical skill and immediately disqualified people for failing concocted and unrealistic tests, I'd end up with mostly shitty candidates who aren't actually very good at the wider job.