[phkahler]

When doing technical interviewing I look for 3 things:

1) Can this person do stuff.

2) Can they learn stuff.

3) Are they interested in learning and doing the things we need them to.

The authors approach of going deep in one area is good for determining #1. You weed out all the people who "were on the team that..." or similar work-adjacent activities and find those that actually did the work / wrote the code / designed the thing / did the testing. Anyone with several years should have worked on more than one thing. Variety of things they actually did indicates an ability to learn which is #2 above. Finally you'll have to gauge how well they'll take to whatever it is you need them to work on, and that's a toss-up. This is where going to a big-name school can be useful since a big part of college is pushing through shit you don't care about for courses that aren't your thing. Otherwise a real interest in your project/product should be enough to motivate the learning and doing if they're capable.

The rest of the "team fit" stuff... You can figure out what they're like on the side while doing an hour long technical interview.

And that's my take on interviewing. I find it quite effective at finding good engineers.