It looks like a lot of the interview is targeted towards the candidate’s CV, eg it surely isn’t a standard question to ask the candidate about their PyConf talks.
"What makes this candidate unique" is the best place to spend the meat of an in-person interview - and the best place for the candidate to sell themselves too. Its usually far too late into the process to waste anyone's time with asking every candidate the same stock questions.
Disagree. I’ve also interviewed hundreds of candidates over the last couple decades, spanning a half dozen or so companies, and there’s always been a rule of consistency. Giving candidates wildly different interview experiences introduces bias, at the very least, but it also makes it very difficult to select the best candidate among a pool. There is simply no way to compare each and stack rank them, you might as well pick one at random.
Indeed. Is there any scientific evidence that tech interviews are better than random selection?