Lets break down the role of interviews into two parts. The first part: To ensure the candidate is sufficiently-socialised and isn't a dangerous toxic mouth-breather. For this, current interviews can work relatively well. An hour or so, face to face, just talking back and forth mulling over problems/theory with an authority in the field or people they're working with.
I am genuinely skeptical about whether people who don't know what they're talking about can actually hide that fact
from people who do know what they're talking about in such a situation. The secret of course is to basically ignore qualifications/status and do it as a conversation. Perhaps in such a scenario, five minutes in me and the original poster would be getting onto ridiculous questions of trading/probability with great big smiles on our faces and forgetting all about whether one can remember bayes off the top of their head.
The second part: Assessing the technical ability of the candidate at hand. And for this I think current interview culture is horribly toxic.
I do not work for Facebook, nor do I believe that such techniques are not without their flaws, and are difficult/expensive to implement, but I think techniques aimed at "actually get the candidate to do the task involved in the job, and see how they go" has merit. Forget your preconceptions about what is required. Give them a real world task you'd expect them to do in the job, the time it would be expected of someone in the job. The resources of the job. See how they go.: See http://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword-extr... for example.
Not perfect, but better than 5 minute "interviewer questions of the year".
Funnily enough, I got into my current organisation answering questions in the interview on analyzing health statistics. Something I knew nothing about. A senior executive then snatched/let me move across to his area in the more technical side of things without a subsequent interview after I made it known I'd be interested, and after working with their guys for a bit on another project. Swings and roundabouts :P
I am genuinely skeptical about whether people who don't know what they're talking about can actually hide that fact from people who do know what they're talking about in such a situation. The secret of course is to basically ignore qualifications/status and do it as a conversation. Perhaps in such a scenario, five minutes in me and the original poster would be getting onto ridiculous questions of trading/probability with great big smiles on our faces and forgetting all about whether one can remember bayes off the top of their head.
The second part: Assessing the technical ability of the candidate at hand. And for this I think current interview culture is horribly toxic.
I do not work for Facebook, nor do I believe that such techniques are not without their flaws, and are difficult/expensive to implement, but I think techniques aimed at "actually get the candidate to do the task involved in the job, and see how they go" has merit. Forget your preconceptions about what is required. Give them a real world task you'd expect them to do in the job, the time it would be expected of someone in the job. The resources of the job. See how they go.: See http://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword-extr... for example.
Not perfect, but better than 5 minute "interviewer questions of the year".
Funnily enough, I got into my current organisation answering questions in the interview on analyzing health statistics. Something I knew nothing about. A senior executive then snatched/let me move across to his area in the more technical side of things without a subsequent interview after I made it known I'd be interested, and after working with their guys for a bit on another project. Swings and roundabouts :P