I avoid any company that requires a software test before the interview.

I worked for a company that introduced them after I joined, I collected evidence all of the companies top performers wouldn’t have joined since we all had multiple offers and having to do the test would put people off applying. The scores from it didn’t correlate with interview results so it was being ignored by everyone. Still took 2 years to get rid of it.

The best place used STAR (Situation Task Action Result) based interviews. The goal was to ask questions until you got 2 stars.

I thought these were great because it was more varied and conversational but there was a comparable consistency accross interviewers.

You would inevitably get references to past work and you switch to asking a few questions about that. Since it was around a situation you would get more complete technical explanations (e.g. on that project I wrote an X and Y was really challenging because of Z).

I loved asking “Tell me about something your really proud off”. Even a nervous junior would start opening up after that question.

After an hour interview you would end up with enough information you could compare them against the company gradings (junior, senior, etc…).

This was important because it changed the attitude of the interview. It wasn’t a case of if the candidate would be a good senior dev for project X, but an assessment of the candidate. If they came out as a lead and we had a lead role, lets offer them that.