> the one screening interview we do which is a one hour pair programming exercise.

I'm not toot excited about the pairing part. Most pair interviews I've had feel like the interviewer is trying to shove a box that says "they arrived at the solution I like in the manner I was expecting". Most pairing feels like me going out of my way to connect with a robot interviewer w/ no imagination.

> For the onsite though, most of the time, I explain the exercise and then I leave people work while I do something else in the same room.

I love this. I'd love to see more interviewer's do this.

Pairing is hard. It is the part of our process that I like the less.

We try to make it easier and fairer with a rule like " if candidate reaches this step = automatic pass" (and the step in question is not that far in the interview).

But there are still many person to person differences and I often have dilemmas.

It is very hard to differentiate between giving a pointer and handholding the candidate.

So sometimes I ask myself if I gave too much or too little help, since there are cases where the candidate would have gone far enough with just a little bit more push and others where I feel that I helped them too much. On a 45 minutes exercise, if you help somebody not getting stuck for 10 minutes, it can make a difference.

Another part that make me uneasy is wondering if accents or culture differences can make me act differently. Like different micro expressions or attitudes from what I would expect, can these influence me enough to go from pass to no pass more easily for some ethnical/cultural groups ?

All in all it is a perilous exercise.

Is the person you’re pairing with googling things and actively helping you? That interview style is fun because then you’re problem solving together and you can see how well you can communicate about complex technical subjects.

Kudos for you trying to alleviate that, but from my past experience you are very the minority - most of the interviewers behave like '12 angry men' judges.