Agree, 10 years ago they asked you about your projects, how you solved problems, what you think about the decisions that were made, to reason about the technologies and architecture etc.

I still think, you can learn much more from that than from trivia questions or text book examples. If a person can argue about choice of technology/algorithm/architecture/method, can tell you how they approach a given problem etc...

My feeling is that the "shortage" is a lie. Back then there were no thousand competitors for every boring job out there. Weeding out so much wasn't necessary for 5 applications :)