I realize there have been lots of discussions about this type of thing and they often devolve into dogma around whether you ask the 100 logical pirates type of questions or whether you get them to write fizz buzz. I'm interested in what techniques and questions have been effective for you when interviewing potential developers for jobs. One technique per answer so we can vote on them, please.
What techniques do you use when interviewing developers?
interview;hiring
Besides real technical questions, and typically at the end of the interview I try to get a grasp of their level of interest in the industry and it's culture with questions like:Have you seen anything recently programming-related that you found interesting and would like to recommend to other fellow programmers? A new language, tool, platform, technique, website?Can you name any well known person in our industry whose work you like or find inspiring and why? (developer, web site founder, author, speaker, etc)What are you reading now or what was the last software related book you read?What programming related sites do you frequent?Although failing to answer these questions at all (sadly it happens very frequently) does not mean a 'no-hire' to me, they say a lot about the way a person approaches the software development profession.