Sit them down in fron tof your system. Have them work on something. If they ca nmanage to pull through, hire them. If not, don't. If your system is so finicky t

Sit them down in fron tof your system. Have them work on something. If they ca nmanage to pull through, hire them. If not, don't. If your system is so finicky that a newcomer can take down, then having this person break it for you will allow for a stronger system to be built. I don't get the fascination with asking stupid interview questions. Sit the person in front of a computer, have them look at your code, have them write some code, and then have them explain the code. After all, it is that very same code what they will be working with. Why not show it right from the start? To add, most applications out there are just front ends to databases. Why do they need to know X or Y? All they need to know is how to write a query and process the results. No big deal.