This is why we're always adamant that our first interview is a phone screen focused on a few coding problems and discussion about them. Yes, you can still tell

This is why we're always adamant that our first interview is a phone screen focused on a few coding problems and discussion about them. Yes, you can still tell some basic things like gender, accent, and so forth, but removing as much of the "first impression" BS that we can is important to us. We save the "culture fit" of the interview process to a later stage, while trying to provide as much transparency about our culture to our candidate as possible. We've ended up hiring some of our best employees that might have not done as well on an in-person interview this way. Yeah, these things shouldn't matter but they tend to. Well done for ignoring the unimportant and focusing on substance!