[barnacled]

You're just making assumptions again.

I have witnessed a huge range of anxiety levels from candidates and when you get used to interviewing it is pretty clear what comes down to anxiety and what comes down to simply not being able to program.

When a candidate struggles, I gently lead them and help move things along in a very collaborative way - I am also very tolerant of mistakes or poor starts and proactively give every opportunity for those to be discounted.

If somebody, after 10 hints as to the ordering of the if/else if/else of fizzbuzz, still cannot figure it out when you have held their hand for 30 minutes that's not because you lack interview skill.

Interviewing is inevitably vastly imperfect and many aspects that are not relevant to the job will play a role (for example - time constraints dictate that you must ask small questions that are sufficiently challenging that might not always be entirely representative of the job) - nobody who is honest could claim otherwise, but that is the nature of the task - it has to be an approximation - and you have to asssess actual ability to code and do the job.

[Retric]

Handholding doesn’t solve the problem of someone second guessing themselves, and can make this much much worse. Outside of pair programming it’s normally a solitary activity where people get plenty of time to reflect. Interjecting in the middle of this is again very different from a work environment.