[baka367]

Yet I have met very few truly bad engineers in my life. Most of the "bad" ones were not bad in skills, but a bad match due to their willingness to die on one hill or another and complete refusal to work with others.

Yet, most of the interviews put way too little focus on the soft skills and way too much focus on the hard skills.

[skeeter2020]

hard skills are difficult enough to try and assess; soft skills even harder. Most try with behavioural questions which have very little signal IMO. I'm a senior manager / director now so most interviews focus on softer skills. My strategy is to give very concrete examples to the "tell me about a time" style questions. Every other answer is easily forgettable.