Assessing skills of individuals is required. Be it academics, interviews, courses / certifications and so on.

IMHO most assessments are not optimally designed which creates a lot of problems…

My biggest issue: assessments are designed not based on what is practically done on a day to day basis, instead on theoretical, trick questions which are far from practical application.

Most of the time, that’s because perhaps these theory-based ones are easy to design and ensure you’ve ‘read’ the text.

I don’t endorse this even for academics, but in interviews especially I think these are just nonsense.

Judge the person on what practical value they will bring, or value they have delivered before.

Oh, BTW, I add test like ‘codility’ in this category too (when was the last time you needed to solve O(N Log N) for work???)