I was a manager for over 25 years, and did lots of interviews, with no technical testing. It was all in-person, with the company covering the expense of the interview. I think some of our best hires, came from independent recruiters (headhunters).

I feel that I never made a mistake, technically, but I believe that a couple of my hires didn’t end up integrating well with the team.

Remote work is now a part of the landscape. It’s actually not new. I worked for a long time, in the 1990s, with a Boston-based contractor, who I have never met, in person. We paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars, over many years, and he did outstanding work.

We got him through an old-fashioned recruiter. A good “old school” recruiter could save a company a lot of up-front time, by doing their own vetting and networking. They would demand a fairly significant “finders fee,” but in my experience, it was worth it.