I am doing interviews with from time to time to recruit some not bad people. And I really think I AM NOT doing to correct Job. I work in a company when We have to do a lot o DB programming, .NET programming, Java programming, so we need people who are open minded and not focused on a particular tech. Afterall language is a notation, You have to understand what is going under the hood.

I ask people about their project, ask them some coding questions (believe me a SQL question involving a CROSS JOIN is hard), let them write some code, ask them about oo design, ask them how they update their knowledge, and stay up to date, do they have FUN when they code (at least sometimes).

Hell I even give them a coding solution for home (3 hours max) to see how they think and code.

And yet my hit rate at hiring junior member (those who live over the initial 3 months) is just about 33%.

So my question, how do YOU make the good interviews, because I think my hit rate is to low? Do you have any best-practices(should be at least 60-70%)?

p.s. And i noticed that: the best programmers are lazy, but motivated, just being lazy is not enough:) But people who write the best code are attentive to details:)