For game development at least I've found that a 10 minute phone interview with simple 'these are things you must know or I will not hire you' questions works wonders for screening. I like to think of it as a bounding volume check for the position you're interviewing for. It's simple, and if you're not intersecting at this level there's no way you'll be intersecting at the more detailed levels.
This works because game development is relatively specialized and there actually are things that I expect anyone claiming to be a game developer to know.
Stuff like basic linear algebra (What can you use a dot product for? What can you use a cross product for?) and simple data structure do's and don'ts (What's one advantage of using an array over using a linked list?). Throwing in a few simple domain specific questions for the position their applying for works well too (I wouldn't ask a network programmer to tell me something about shaders, but I would expect a graphics programmer to be able to talk about them for a few minutes)
Some of the questions are designed so that there are lots of right answers, and some of them impress me more than others. For instance, if you mention that an array is generally more cache-friendly than a linked list and you can explain why when I ask you, you get bonus points.
If they do well on most of the questions then follow up interviews (phone or in person) are in order. Occasionally someone will nail all the questions, I tend to get excited when this happens.
This works because game development is relatively specialized and there actually are things that I expect anyone claiming to be a game developer to know.
Stuff like basic linear algebra (What can you use a dot product for? What can you use a cross product for?) and simple data structure do's and don'ts (What's one advantage of using an array over using a linked list?). Throwing in a few simple domain specific questions for the position their applying for works well too (I wouldn't ask a network programmer to tell me something about shaders, but I would expect a graphics programmer to be able to talk about them for a few minutes)
Some of the questions are designed so that there are lots of right answers, and some of them impress me more than others. For instance, if you mention that an array is generally more cache-friendly than a linked list and you can explain why when I ask you, you get bonus points.
If they do well on most of the questions then follow up interviews (phone or in person) are in order. Occasionally someone will nail all the questions, I tend to get excited when this happens.