Fizzbuzz is one thing. Balancing binary trees, is another. I've learned that if I see a binary tree question, I might as well stop the process, as they have no intentions of hiring me. They want someone fresh out of college, and I'm really just an EEOC checkmark.

I've said it many, many times, here. If a candidate has a portfolio, you'd be absolute idiots to ignore that portfolio.

Or deliberately ignorant, as the decision has already been made, not to hire the candidate (for reasons that have nothing at all to do with their tech abilities), and no one wants to waste time, reviewing a portfolio.

I'm biased, here, of course, as that's my strength. I have a fairly substantial portfolio.

A portfolio makes it much easier to evaluate real world skills and capabilities. If a candidate sends a link to a sample project or OSS product they've worked on/developed, it's not particularly difficult to review the example, and then ask the candidate a bunch of questions about it. I've found that the conversations that arise from this kind of thing can be amazing.

But this won't work for managers that have a hundred résumés on their desk, and have maybe five minutes per candidate. As that was never my own experience, as a hiring manager, I can't speak to it. I rarely had candidates that had significant portfolios, and treasured the ones that did.

In my experience, it usually took about two minutes of casual conversation, to figure out if the candidate had potential, or was simply a jargonaut.