[CommieBobDole]

I agree with you - the best way to do the things I talked about is to spend time talking with the person to ensure that they actually understand and can reasonably communicate about the skills they claim to have.

There's probably a place for practical programming tests, too, but whiteboarding algorithms and such seems to be more of a fraternity hazing/secret handshake ritual than anything else. Good if the skill you need to hire for is "Read and memorized 'Cracking the Coding Interview'", not really indicative of anything else.