You say we need to figure a few basic things out, how do we do if a person has basic confidence if not by asking them questions.
Please keep in mind that resumes nor any other data from the candidate can be trusted, because a huge amount of candidates lie or are mistaken about their own skill. I once interviewed a candidate who claimed to have 10 years of SQL experience but couldn't write a query on the order of "select * from table_name". Fully half of all people I have interviewed failed to convince me they could write anything more complex than "Hello World".
I am not advocating hours and hours of needless hoops, but a candidate for just a about any programming job should be able to Write a working fizzbuzz implementation. Questions on the order of fizzbuzz can and do eliminate a huge number of possible candidates.
Please keep in mind that resumes nor any other data from the candidate can be trusted, because a huge amount of candidates lie or are mistaken about their own skill. I once interviewed a candidate who claimed to have 10 years of SQL experience but couldn't write a query on the order of "select * from table_name". Fully half of all people I have interviewed failed to convince me they could write anything more complex than "Hello World".
I am not advocating hours and hours of needless hoops, but a candidate for just a about any programming job should be able to Write a working fizzbuzz implementation. Questions on the order of fizzbuzz can and do eliminate a huge number of possible candidates.