I am new to interviewing, but I have two working hypotheses:

1. Hire based on the resume, gut check on the interview. Is it plausible that they played the role that they said they did? If you were a major contributor to an RPC framework in C, but you can't walk a linked list... Maybe your resume is too inflated. This means that the questions are basic because their purpose is not to rank candidates but to ensure the validity of the resume.

2. Focus on reading over writing. I would rather a candidate who can read code someone else wrote, articulate what it does, and maybe plan for how to extend it than someone who can pretend to invent something new.