Fuzzy IT interviews - a new craze? (credit, degree, employers)

[gardenpea]

(or is it just a new way to deal with the over-supply of qualified developers?)

How to deal with personality tests disguised as technical tests?

I am an experienced (10+ years) software developer with a definitely relevant accredited university degree. I have recently been through a bunch of phone/in-person interviews for positions heralded by the job "recruiter" as "senior positions" where I was asked by the interviewer (sometimes a "manager" with none to flimsy programming background) either:

1. quite basic technical questions that every reasonable developer should be able to answer after no more than 1 year of work (e.g., explain interface vs. abstract class). I answered them well, although it has become embarrassing to be asked such questions. I have provided in my resume links to several definitely non-trivial open-source projects that I have been developed over the last few years. It would be impossible to create such things without a lot more than this very elementary type of knowledge.

2. Yes/no or open-ended questions. E.g. "Have you worked with framework X?", "Have you worked in an agile environment?", "What do you think about language Y?". Or "What did you do in project Z?" (I get about 60-90 seconds to explain).

Never heard back from any of these employers.

The problem with these questions is, that they make it almost impossible to distinguish myself from the other 100-200 candidates. So it's quite obvious to me that whether these are questions of type (1) or (2) - all they want is to hear how I talk, judge my personality by what I say and how I say it, and don't care much about my professional qualifications and how I think.

These guys are getting paid for this game, while I am not. I started contemplating walking out of such interviews.

P.S. In the past, I did come across variants of such interviews. It was just not so often.

[pappjohn]

Sound ridiculous, they want too much from you.