Does that mean you're looking for management type positions? It's been a while since I've interviewed, but I always thought at least a little bit of coding in an interview was good, because you know the company weeds out people who are lying about being programmers.
No, for development positions. If a recruiter can't weed out posers before a manager/developer talks to them, that recruiter should be dehired.
To get jobs at my current and previous company, I just talked to the lead developer for 3+ hours. No coding necessary. I was quizzed on design patterns and given architecture problems, which I find more appropriate than FizzBuzz.
Also, my alumni association is very useful for job hunts. I'll never go back to cold-calling or responding to LinkedIn solicitations again. I chat with an alumnus over coffee for a few hours, and twice it's resulted in job offers without the need for a formal interview.
That makes sense. I think if I was looking now I'd probably call people I used to work with rather than bother with interviewing. The failure rate on FizzBuzz type tests is really high though, and it should take 30-60 minutes (which would save you the 3 hour discussion on the failure mode). Of course, if you were going to interview at a bunch of places, it would be better if you only had to do that test once.
Recently it also seems like more people are over-prepared to interview than ever before. At the entry level code academies prep people really well to appear more "senior", and other people are studying the "Cracking the Coding Interview" book. The challenge for the interviewer is determining if the person has memorized a bunch of interview sequences or if they understand the material they are talking about. I'm inclined to think some form of programming with discussion in the interview is still a good signal, if it's like what you'd actually be doing.
I don't know what the other commenter is doing, but if I was in that position, I'd find a linkedin or Facebook group for my school, find people in the area, and contact them directly to get together with me for lunch or coffee, and ask them for for career advice. The alumni association for my school also has local meetups in many cities, so that would be a good avenue as well.
A lot of places offer recruitment bonuses, so I suspect that if you contact someone and there are openings, they would be willing to help.
