Our interviews are never in the office. They are at a restaurant or bar. We just have drinks and food with them and chat. Talk about technology, them, us, etc... If we can have lunch and drinks with someone and they are talented then they are a good fit for the team.

The lunch/bar setting also loosens the interviewee up and they are always less nervous than if we had brought them into the conference room.

We don't care how talented you are if we can't stand being around you. If we had to choose between a mediocre programmer who has a lot of passion and fun to be around or a brilliant programmer who is arrogant, we'll take the mediocre guy and just train him up into being a brilliant programmer.

You're selecting for extroverts at the expense of introverts. Which may be desirable for your company, but I would (somewhat selfishly) not want that to be the common case.

we'll take the mediocre guy and just train him up into being a brilliant programmer

If you actually have a successful process for doing that, you could be owning many islands.

Its not about introvert vs extrovert, its about passion. I don't think any of the people on my team would do well socially at a bar but you ask us something about Linux, Python, etc and we could talk for hours.

"If you actually have a successful process for doing that, you could be owning many islands."

Don't pull a fox news on me, you can't rip out the most important part of that sentence ;)

Someone _who has a lot of passion_