I would argue that a brief conversation with a senior developer provides as useful information as any coding test or fancy interview question. The only way to really know if someone is going to be a good fit for your organization is to hire them and work with them for a couple weeks. After just a couple weeks, you know everything you need to know about the candidate. Unfortunately, most of the world makes a hiring someone for 2 weeks difficult. If you want to fix something about the hiring process, find a way to let people work together for a couple weeks before hiring them as full-time employees. I've done this with contractors in the past and it works wonderfully. I still hire people and fire them if they don't work out after a couple weeks. I also tell people I will do this during the hiring process.