I never make a candidate take tests. After 20 years in this industry I have come to the conclusion that they are useless. It's applied Curse of knowledge, one assumes because they can do it, all others should be able to. I have seen some of the best developers in the world that cannot do fizzbuzz in an interview situation no matter how comfortable you make them.
Personally, I have a really good track record of finding and hiring talent. So much so that, friends in other companies will ask me to find them someone. Anyways, one of the most powerful things I do to find talent is ask them either send me some code ahead of time or better yet bring a laptop with a working project they have done, on it. I then ask one simple question, show me the piece of code in this project that you wrote and are most proud of. Someone that is BS'ing can't BS through that. It shows real world application, and people are generally most proud of things that they had to overcome adversity on, they are happy to talk about how they solved the problem. People try to make interviewing hard, but with that single question you will know everything you need to know about their technical skills. Personality skills is another matter, but I just take them to lunch and hang out with them to figure out if they are a fit personality wise.
At the moment I have no plans to expand. My current company is just a one man consultancy (service based). At some point though I will start or join another product based start-up, at which point I will be. If you would like, contact me via my info in my profile and when that time comes I will let you know.
Personally, I have a really good track record of finding and hiring talent. So much so that, friends in other companies will ask me to find them someone. Anyways, one of the most powerful things I do to find talent is ask them either send me some code ahead of time or better yet bring a laptop with a working project they have done, on it. I then ask one simple question, show me the piece of code in this project that you wrote and are most proud of. Someone that is BS'ing can't BS through that. It shows real world application, and people are generally most proud of things that they had to overcome adversity on, they are happy to talk about how they solved the problem. People try to make interviewing hard, but with that single question you will know everything you need to know about their technical skills. Personality skills is another matter, but I just take them to lunch and hang out with them to figure out if they are a fit personality wise.