[kevinr]

Companies above garage size literally employ people to answer candidate questions. If the company hasn't invested the time to answer "What are you trying to figure out about a candidate in an interview?" and its recruiters don't have a simple, objective answer, they should stop interviewing and go answer that before they start again.

A simple answer is something like, "We want to figure out whether a candidate can do the work we need them to do. We do that by giving candidates sample work problems which are streamlined versions of problems we've actually solved at the company in the past. People we hire are more likely to still be employed with us than they are at our competitors after a year. We know we don't hire enough women and URMs into technical roles, and we're instituting a rule that at least one woman or URM candidate needs to be interviewed for each open role."

[kafkaesq]

"We want to figure out whether a candidate can do the work we need them to do."

Well, yeah, that's the thing - the answer is (or should be) so self-evident that one wonders if one wonders whether the question is really worth the bandwidth.

[kevinr]

So few companies are clear about it in their hiring processes, and therefore wind up hiring for all sorts of skills which have at best weak bearing on actual job performance in most roles (eg. brain teaser memorization) that the answer is, empirically, yes.

[kafkaesq]

Hmm. I have they sense they know do what they want ("a candidate who can do the work") but have but are basically at a loss as to how to deterministically assess that via the standard interview format. Hence the brain teaser stuff.