spacemaus

Hyperbole, yes, but the word is often used in a sense that is semantically identical to "figuratively". For example, in my previous comment you could s/literally kills/figuratively kills/ without changing the sentence's meaning. (Although it would change the role of the modifier from emphasis to clarification.)

I should say "now officially", then :)

As a recovering language curmudgeon, it literally kills me that "literally" is now an auto-antonym too [1].

[1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng...

Funny, last week I wrote some notes about doing just this :). It would be hard to build a general purpose platform, but I think if it focused on just replacing the initial technical phone screen, it could be both reliable and useful.

There's a common set of skills that most any software engineer should have. I think those skills can probably be checked via a web tool, and in higher fidelity than you can get over the phone.

As a candidate applying to N jobs, I'd much rather take a web screen once instead of doing N technical phone interviews. And as an interviewer, I'd much rather not have to ask FizzBuzz again.

Relevant: a startup called Interview Club[1] presented at the Launch Festival recently. Another startup called PreHire[2] won the hackathon (although their product is more for hiring customer service reps).

[1] http://www.launchfestival.com/theinterviewclub [2] http://www.launchfestival.com/prehire