I have had the honour and experience of hiring several talented individuals.
I have tried different approaches to assessing a team member. My secret is that I look for crucial character traits. Having tried different approaches to evaluating a prospects suitability, I have come to the conclusion that in most cases lengthy tests or situations that induce stress, are both unnecessary and unfair. I am of the opinion that if you are faced with that kind of situation then something/someone up stream has messed up and it’s more important to me to know how a person (a) handles that situation and (2) how they identify learning points.