Answer by Tikhon Jelvis, Software Engineer, on Quora:I don’t know what will come in software engineering interviews, but I know what should come next: carefully calibrated and standardized work-sample tests. Think coding and algorithmic interview questions but less arbitrary and ad-hoc:Designed to faithfully represent the actual work environment (no whiteboards!) The main conclusions of this survey are:Work-sample tests have the best predictive performanceGeneral mental ability tests (ie IQ tests) also perform wellStructured interviews perform on par with GMA tests and much better than unstructured interviewsinterviews perform on par with GMA tests and better than unstructured interviews The core effective methods (work-sample tests and structured interviews) perform better alongside a GMA testWhile structured interview do perform well, most tech company interview processes are closer to unstructured interviews. Here’s a table of the methods analyzed in the survey, along with a validity measure (r):Work-sample tests have the best individual performance, followed by structured interviews and GMA tests. You can see a rough progression in tech interviewing from brain teasers and other nonsense towards work-sample tests, but it hasn’t come nearly far enough.

Source: Forbes February 23, 2017 20:02 UTC