[Quick tips to the company] If having university studies finished is an absolute must: -> Don't waste the time of candidates. If not: -> Feel free to ask your question regarding this topic, but accept the honest answer you're getting - or don't, but nonetheless, move on to the more relevant, technical parts. -> Ask those questions in a non-judgmental, passive or - heaven forbid! - friendly way. No need to get personal, no need to force your opinion and preconceptions on your candidate. -> Don't assume the candidates didn't learn their craft *before* being sure they did not do so. -> Don't act like the candidate is unworthy to the VERY HIGH STANDARD of your company - while asking the very same usual, boring, mostly easy basic Java/software development questions. -> Going above the interview time limit is fine by me. Going above by 40 minutes because 30 minutes of your 1 hour interview flied away because you got fixated on not yet finished studies is not fine. -> You may cherish your thoughts that finding weak points and checking how the candidate reacts to potentially sensitive questions is a great thing. Whether that's a good technique to welcome future employees, one way or the other, you shouldn't force yourself through every possible opportunity to undermine and go into full interrogation mode. Just a hint: no other company has ever asked any more than 2 questions regarding university studies: "why have you not finished yet?", "will you finish it?". Takes about 2 (not 20) minutes only in the HR phase, and also not an additional 30 minutes in a later phase. [Quick tip to potential candidates] Find another place if you are not desperate. If this company would be a ship, it would sink because of all those red flags. [Summarized] They try to sell themselves as a highly professional company with highly educated workforce while - not asking any harder or more complex questions. - keeping their interview in a meeting room that looks like a middle-school classroom where the teacher haven't yelled at the students clean out. They even had a rollup map of Europe for no apparent reason. - running on a website that's barely functional and has an overwhelming stench of the '90s. - interrogating and judging candidates in an unfriendly way. - having an interviewing manager who won't even work with you if they hire you; lacks some pretty important social skills, boasts that he could ask you "evil and difficult" questions while never being able to do so when asked for; who radiates the inner pain of superiority complex. - having an HR that sits 2-3 weeks on the applicant's interview process without any feedback then pushes you on the next interview date immediately after you had to cancel your next interview because you got sick.