Sparking a conversation about a specific piece of code is going to likely reveal if someone doesn’t know what they’re doing. If you narrow candidates down to a

Sparking a conversation about a specific piece of code is going to likely reveal if someone doesn’t know what they’re doing. If you narrow candidates down to a handful and talk about the same piece of code with each you will have some different things to think about. Depending on candidate experience it can lead to tougher concepts to discuss. The purpose of quick tests seems to be only to eliminate people. At the end you have (amongst other criteria I hope) “Yup, can do fizzbuzz” or “Nope, can’t do fizzbuzz”. A coding test without a conversation is as good as filtering resumes based on schooling level or degree or any other quantitative piece of data.