[scorpioxy]

Personally, i found that typical programmer interviews are a waste of time. I played both sides of the table and now I just ask for a small project as a sample to be written and brought to the interview and then discussed.

The discussion reveals a lot about the candidate from coding style to design decisions and shortcuts made. I am especially interested in the shortcuts and that the candidate understands what's wrong with them and have them explain why he/she took that route.

The sample can be as easy as a command line todo application or any utility that should take just a couple of hours to make.

Granted i don't do a lot of interviews, but when i did that's what i asked for. My boss on the other hand does typical interviews and the quality of the candidates shortlisted shows.