It isn't but it strikes me we are looking very hard to find a new way to do things, when the old way was pretty damn good.
Sit me down and talk about technology for ~thirty minutes. If I don't have the social skills to successfully do this (minority issue) I likely would not be able to communicate well with a team and thus should not be a candidate anyways. You will then know immediately whether you want to hire me (or progress me to another round) or not.
I then get a call two days later and can progress with my life.
People pretend like all this hiring strategy is for the good of the candidate. It's not. As with everything else its for the good of the company and its investors.
Here's a thought:
Invest in a competent hiring manager who can see through applicant bull shit and identify talent within a reasonable range. Includes basic negotiation skills. And assume the rightful risk that is employing another human being.
This is an efficient way to hire a team of good bullshitters. I've interviewed people who did extremely well when we were "talking like professionals" but were unable to do even very simple coding problems.
My bar for coding is really not that high. I don't expect perfect syntax. I don't pick the language. I don't expect "the one answer". I expect people to write code that could work after syntax and small bugs are fixed, and most critically, I expect people to be able to discuss their code meaningfully.
Unfortunately, "ability to write basic code" and "ability to talk like professionals" are not tightly correlated. And I expect both of these things from dev candidates.
Problem with that is it's hard to find one. It's gotta be someone with pretty good coding skills. This person would then have to share their time between either coding head-down or managing coders, either of which are time-consuming and intolerant of disruption.
One idea I had was you could have mutual feedback. A bunch of people would after a while have anonymous input on each other, giving you say 10 coder's impressions of a fellow coder. This wouldn't have to be quizzes, half hour coffees could do.
