I won't mention the name of the employer because I couldn't in good faith recommend that anyone work there. However, we would interview in a similar style. We'

I won't mention the name of the employer because I couldn't in good faith recommend that anyone work there. However, we would interview in a similar style. We'd open the interview with the same kind of 'what have you been working on' ice breaker to get started and to give the candidate something to refer back to. Then we had a core set of thematic questions to talk around (topics like DB design, API design, OO programming). Nothing was designed to catch anyone out, but it was a great chance to see how much detail a candidate could go into and how comfortable they were in their knowledge. Having sat on both sides of the process, there's nothing I hate more than trick questions and technical tests. It's not representative of how we work, so it shouldn't be how we decide who gets the job either.