>In your examples, did they go through a coding challenge / whiteboard process?
I think he was trying to point out that if some of the bad candidates had passed a whiteboard test, it brings in to the questions of the effectiveness of whiteboard tests to filter out bad candidates.
I remember a guy we hired years ago who answered all the tech questions we asked with flying colors. He was lazy and unmotivated and ended up dumping all his work on other people (me). I would have much rather had a motivated person who I had to teach some stuff to rather than him.
Saying this method of interview is not 100% effective so it's useless is not a great argument. Reality is that bad hires are really expensive (as argued above) and that current interview methods are somewhat - admittedly not 100% - effective at avoiding those while mostly - again not 100% - effective at admitting the great hires. Maybe this "convert to discussion" method is more effective (I have my doubts), and I'm sure there are more effective methods out there and we should look for them, but let's recognize the reasons for what we have while we look for something better.
I think he was trying to point out that if some of the bad candidates had passed a whiteboard test, it brings in to the questions of the effectiveness of whiteboard tests to filter out bad candidates.
I remember a guy we hired years ago who answered all the tech questions we asked with flying colors. He was lazy and unmotivated and ended up dumping all his work on other people (me). I would have much rather had a motivated person who I had to teach some stuff to rather than him.