I’ve been on both sides of the table, big company and small. The common interview practices, and the one brought up by OP, stem from a desire to have a system t

I’ve been on both sides of the table, big company and small. The common interview practices, and the one brought up by OP, stem from a desire to have a system that doesn’t rely on trusting the candidate. I think this is a bad place to start. But how do you weed out people misrepresenting their ability? I think it’s a lot easier than most realize: first you need _something_ to talk about, have the candidate bring something they worked on. Then ask a ton of questions. Not just technical questions, questions about motivation, interest, reasoning, and taste. The argument against this is that not everyone has time to make something on their own time and it just shifts the privilege to those with a greater share of free time. I think there is something to that, BUT: the power to choose the subject is in the hands of the candidate not the interviewer, that to eliminate all the test-like processes seems like a fair trade.