The last interview I did, I was asked to find and fix a bug in a small code fragment. On my own, I'd have fixed it in a jiffy; with two interviewers looking over my shoulder I was nervous, and it took longer.
But if you're interviewing on the basis that the candidate claims in their resume to know language X, then a brief test of that is essential; and an online test doesn't cut the mustard - it could be anyone doing the work.
A Whiteboard coding challenge is the exact thing you describe. But instead of interviewers looking over your shoulder, they look at the whiteboard as you stand in front of them and write code on the whiteboard.
The last interview I did, I was asked to find and fix a bug in a small code fragment. On my own, I'd have fixed it in a jiffy; with two interviewers looking over my shoulder I was nervous, and it took longer.
But if you're interviewing on the basis that the candidate claims in their resume to know language X, then a brief test of that is essential; and an online test doesn't cut the mustard - it could be anyone doing the work.