I appreciate the thoughtful response and I don't really disagree with you on any of this. In fact, if I were interviewing for positions, I'm not sure I'd handle it any other way -- it's human nature to choose the "safe" option -- but that doesn't make it right or optimal. But it's also taken to an extreme: I have a BS in CompSci (from 12 years ago), but "never been a professional coder" almost always outweighed everything like a fat kid on a see-saw. It's a double-whammy: not only are they looking at self-taughts harder, self-taughts are naturally going to be less comfortable with best practices, lingo and other general experience they'd pick up in a month's time on the job.

In trying to put my thoughts into words here, I found it easier to whip up some pie graphs instead.

http://www.fivedogit.com/2015/the-problem-with-technical-hir...

Damn! I forgot to include "Do you have exp with the company's stack?". Oh well. That's more about getting the interview in the first place, so I guess it's ok.