Personally, the anxiety of whiteboard “coding as performance art” makes my brain freeze. I see it as a broken process. It certainly selects against me.
I think you can learn more useful stuff about a programmer by showing them a function prototype and asking how to black-box test it. Then show them complete code, and ask them to white-box test it. Test cases or a test plan, depending on scale. Then a discussion of test tools they have used.
The people who can produce quality code for your organization will show up pretty fast.
In higher education there has been a lot of walk back from tests like the GRE in most fields. It turns out, being good at the GRE only correlates to your ability to be good at taking the GRE, and doesn't correlate with actual graduate school performance or outcomes.
Performative interviews occupy a similar space. You spend all this time and effort studying for something at is ultimately irrelevant outside of the interview. Just a pure waste of brain cells and calories, with a few new gray hairs for you.
I think you can learn more useful stuff about a programmer by showing them a function prototype and asking how to black-box test it. Then show them complete code, and ask them to white-box test it. Test cases or a test plan, depending on scale. Then a discussion of test tools they have used.
The people who can produce quality code for your organization will show up pretty fast.