Or you could very well hire them for a few days (on holidays at their ob or on unpaid leave for contractors), see how it goes and take it from there. I don't t

Or you could very well hire them for a few days (on holidays at their ob or on unpaid leave for contractors), see how it goes and take it from there. I don't think employers are evil, they don't get value out of the interview process. I would say both employer and prospect employee gets a similar value out of it (the chance of hiring / being hired). I think employers (or better, their middle managers in charge or recruitment) are mostly stupid and inefficient. Working together for a bit is the only way of actually checking if someone will be fine doing the job or not. Demonstrating some random knowledge is not a good predictor of success. I worked with people who passed leetcoding and were trash and people who didn't who were amazing. I found out about their qualities only after a few weeks of work (not even full time, even just on and off).